Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?

Format

Fifty women, one from each state, competed in a beauty pageant-style event to marry a mystery multi-millionaire they had only seen in silhouette. The contest featured a swimsuit round and a question-and-answer segment. The millionaire, later identified as Rick Rockwell, chose Contestant Number 13, Darva Conger from California, and married her immediately on air. Along with the televised wedding, Conger received a three-carat diamond ring and prizes worth over $100,000.

More than 22 million people watched the broadcast. The show’s title spoofed the popular ABC game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Fox’s head of unscripted programming, Mike Darnell, said he was motivated by that show’s success and a wedding he had attended. He described “winning money” and “getting married” as two “huge American dreams” he aimed to merge.

Reception

The show pulled in huge ratings, but it was immediately slammed as exploitative, drawing sharp criticism from the National Organization for Women and the Media Research Center. Almost as soon as it aired, people started wondering if the supposed millionaire groom, Rick Rockwell, was actually rich. Fox claimed he had $750,000 in liquid assets and a net worth just over $2 million, but his ordinary house—complete with a discarded toilet in the backyard—didn’t exactly scream wealth.

Other claims he made also fell apart. He said he quit comedy in 1990 to become a motivational speaker, yet he performed at a comedy club as late as 1998, and several groups he claimed to have spoken for said they’d never hired him. Then, on February 19, The Smoking Gun revealed that a former girlfriend, Debbie Goyne, had filed a restraining order against him in 1991 for domestic violence. She said he assaulted her and stalked her when she tried to end their engagement.

The order eventually expired because there were no reports of him violating it. It also came out that Rockwell wasn’t his real name—he was born Richard Balkey in Pittsburgh on October 26, 1957. During taping, he was mostly called Balkey, and the name “Rockwell” was often overdubbed or inserted later using what reality TV fans call Franken-bites.

The bride, Darva Conger, quickly regretted the whole thing. After a honeymoon in Barbados, she told Good Morning America, “I am not married to him. In my heart I’m not married to him.” She said the marriage wasn’t consummated and they stayed in separate cabins. She then sought an annulment and later sold the engagement ring and other prizes online.

The annulment was finalized on April 5, 2000. Because of all the controversy, Fox canceled a planned repeat of the show and scrapped any future episodes. Fox Entertainment chairman Sandy Grushow said that even though such shows had been profitable, the network couldn’t get any long-term benefit from them.

Aftermath

After the show aired, Conger made numerous public comments about how she was offended by Rockwell's kissing her on stage, that they never consummated their marriage, and how the entire episode went against her set of morals. Matt Lauer was publicly critical of Conger being asked to do multiple interviews on The Today Show, saying he did not want her on after the first interview, becoming incredulous at her claims she did not want to be well-known, and making sarcastic comments in the second interview, where he pointedly said "You're not coming back, right?" and responded to her "Only if I do something amazing" response with the notion that he would never talk to her again. Lauer and Today executive producer Jeffrey Zucker agreed she would never be asked back to The Today Show.

In February 2001, Conger and Rockwell appeared on Larry King Live and sparred over comments each of them had made about the other. Conger claimed that she should not have appeared on the program at all, and admitted that she had been overly harsh in her public statements about Rockwell. In August 2000, Conger posed nude for Playboy magazine.

She faced Olga Korbut on an episode of Celebrity Boxing which aired on May 22, 2002; Conger won by unanimous decision. Conger married physician assistant Jim Arellano in 2003, with whom she had one son, Cassius. They divorced in 2009 and she and her son live in Northern California, where she works as a nurse anesthetist. Rockwell toured the country on a comedy tour he called "The Annulment Tour", and appeared on an episode of The Norm Show.

He later appeared as a presenter in several aviation computer-based training CD-ROM courses from King Schools. In 2025 on the 25-year anniversary of the show's airing on Fox, Conger gave a few interviews where she confirmed that she didn't take the show seriously, wasn't interested in Rockwell at all, and beyond enjoying the experience and payment when she posed for Playboy was happy to have moved entirely past the situation to become a single mom who did wood-working as a hobby. Efforts by reporters to get Rockwell to speak on the record or show where he now lives were unsuccessful, but their searches also confirmed that he no longer works in comedy or any other facet of entertainment, and is no longer a public figure.

Did You Know?

• In 2002, TV Guide ranked it number 25 on its "50 Worst TV Shows of All Time" list.
• The special was conceived by Mike Darnell while attending the wedding of his wife's cousin in August 1999.