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Marrying millionaire Rick Rockwell comes home for a laugh
Tuesday, May 16, 2000 By John Hayes, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Just a nice guy from Aspinwall trying to find a good-hearted woman -- that's how Rick Rockwell explains his televised marriage to Darva Conger on Fox's "Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?"
The former Fox Chapel Area High School student and standup comic returned to Pittsburgh yesterday for the first time since his public ordeal to perform at the Funny Bone Comedy Club at Station Square and for on-air interviews at radio stations WLTJ and WRRK.
In the morning Rockwell answered questions submitted by WLTJ listeners. During evening rush hour Rockwell starred in WRRK's "Win the Honeymoon Without the Wedding" contest, in which he asked questions of several female contestants in the studio and chose one -- Carmella Salem of Greenfield -- to win a Caribbean vacation. This time, the winner gets to go without him.
In a radio studio following the morning Q&A, Rockwell said he genuinely had hoped to meet Miss Right through the TV contest and failed to anticipate the level of media interest in his life.
"I'd much rather have gotten famous for an HBO special or because I rescued some kid from a burning building," he said. "But this is what I got ... I think one of the things that's hurt me the most through this ordeal has been [the media portrayal] ... I've had so much incorrect information disseminated about me."
Particularly troubling, he said, were one magazine's interview with his former college hockey teammates who said the public didn't know "the real Rick Rockwell" and reports of his run-ins with the legal system.
"I had a restraining order filed on me almost 10 years ago," he said. "You have a young, empowered professional woman who claimed I hit her. She called the police immediately after I let the air out of her tires. I was really [mad] at her and it was the only thing I could think of to do. But why didn't she call them after I allegedly hit her?"
Although he says he didn't hit her, he made no such denial in the case of the other restraining order, filed against him by a relative of a former roommate about 20 years ago. After a confrontation over the payment of bills, the man's brother called to threaten him with a hockey stick, he says.
"I said, Whoa! I don't know where you're getting your information ... and secondly, here's my address. What time you want to come over ...? The next time I saw him I gave him more than a piece of my mind."
Did he hit him?
"I'm not even going to go there," he said.
But insults to his comedic prowess seem to bother Rockwell the most. He's upset, he said, about a wire-service story that minimized the success of his standup career prior to the "Millionaire" show. Although he has performed for decades at comedy clubs including the Portfolio in Oakland and the Funny Bone, Rockwell says he's been more financially successful performing at private corporate functions.
"I just had my 20-year anniversary of being a standup comedian on May 9," he said. "I always worked. Writing, speaking and performing comedy were the main ways I made my living."
Rockwell says wise real estate investments of his standup earnings constitute about half of his fortune, which he says makes him "barely qualified to be on a show called 'Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire?' "
His newfound celebrity, however, has been, "the best and the worst of everything." He's negotiating for a job as host of a TV show, working with a Web site for eligible bachelors and writing a book chronicling his experience. Although he has yet to interest a publisher, he hopes its release will coincide with Conger's upcoming photo spread in Playboy.
Although the corporate comedy work has dried up for him, Rockwell is more in demand than ever at the clubs.
Last night's show at the Funny Bone (he performs again tonight) brought out a new sort of audience for Rockwell. Despite attempts to segue to his standard and relatively clean material, the crowd heckled for Darva jokes. And unlike his regular stuff, much of the Darva material is below-the-belt insults that would be unfit for a family newspaper.
But he says in his defense: "I can't believe what she's been saying about me."
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