Darva Conger Lets It All Hang Out

June 30, 2000 -- -- Now that we can see all of Darva Conger, haven’t we seen more than enough?

Not if she has her way.

The Wolf Files followed the bride of Fox TV’s Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire Wednesday to Playboy’s New York office, where she ballyhooed her 10-page pictorial in the August edition, showing the world what her game-show groom, Rick Rockwell, missed on their wedding night.

For months she had been blasting “you people” in the media, who harassed her family, picked through her trash and caused her to lose two nursing jobs. Now she is embracing celebrity, looking at a book deal, and even contemplating a TV job.

Forced to Be a Celebrity?

With throngs of media circling at Playboy’s penthouse, Conger, 34, got serious when one reporter jokingly asked about her joining up with Regis Philbin after his daytime broadcast partner, Kathie Lee Gifford, departs.

“I don’t think anyone could replace Kathie Lee,” Conger said. “I’d like to think I could do a good job as Regis’ co-host. I think he and I would get along rather well.”

TV, once the enemy and source of her notoriety, is now a friend. And she wouldn’t mind a full-time job.

This, of course, is the same woman who, only days after her Feb. 15 televised marriage to Rockwell, was sobbing to the press, “I want to get my life back.”

But Conger now says she has little choice but to be a celebrity. “I lost my old job and then another because the press kept hounding my employers,” she says.

Playboy was simply her best alternative, as she explains it. “What was I supposed to do, wait for the bank to foreclose on my home?”

Conger reportedly is earning well into the six digits for her Playboy gig. She says other men’s magazines and adult Web sites were offering her more. But she had more than money to consider. “My family and I felt comfortable with Playboy,” she says. “I’m proud of how everything came out.”

Still, if Conger really is making the best of a bad situation, at least she knows how to enjoy herself. A German cameraman came up to her. “You have many fans in Germany,” he said. “Can we get a shot of you reading Playboy?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, as she proceeded to thumb through her photo spread and appraise her favorite shot, a full-length, rear view on page 141. “You can see my triceps,” she gloats. “I’ve always been a nut about working out. I StairMaster and lift.”

‘I’m Not a Bedroom Bunny’

Whether or not you find Conger attractive, her photos have that Playboy perfection that makes you wonder whether an imaginative photo editor was airbrushing her unmentionables.

But Conger insists that it’s really her on page 143, sunning her nipples on a parched desert, wearing nothing but an ankle bracelet.

“I’ve never even had boyfriends take pictures like this,” she said. “But it’s amazing how comfortable I felt, maybe because everything was so professional and it was a natural environment. I didn’t want any bedroom innuendo. I’m not a voluptuous bedroom bunny. I’m an outdoor person.”

There’s nothing unnatural or undignified about posing nude, Conger says. “It feels like plunging into icy water,” she said. “Once you get in, you’re fine.

Conger finished the day at Manhattan’s Planet Hollywood, donating the wedding dress she wore on the magazine cover. “I don’t need it anymore,” she says. “It’s a lot nicer than the one I wore on TV. I’m glad they’re putting it on display.

“I spend a couple more days in New York,” she says. “Then it’s Chicago, Las Vegas and L.A. Then it is a new page in my life.”

Conger says she’s looking forward to the day when she won’t have to relive the experience of being a bride chosen from among 50 contestants at a Las Vegas event that made TV history. She’s not saying if she’s been involved with anyone since her two-month, unconsummated marriage, which has now been annulled. But she says she wants the same things out of life that a lot of people do.

“It’s a bittersweet end,” Conger said, amid the popping of flashbulbs.

“Now, I want to get on with my life and be the best Darva I can be.”

Buck Wolf is a producer at ABCNEWS.com. The Wolf Files is a weekly feature. If you want to receive notice weekly when a new column is published, join the e-mail list.