HOLLYWOOD -- They live apart and she can't remember the date they got married.

But Carmen Electra wants the world to know that she is very definitely Mrs. Dennis Rodman. And that she's not a gold-digging, NBA-star shanghaier.

"We are legally married," the actress and singer said yesterday. "We love each other very much and we're doing great."

Here to promote her new role in the WBTV drama Hyperion Bay, the former Baywatch bombshell spent her time denying a whirlwind of rumours that have swirled since the Nov. 14 nuptials. (I checked the date. She couldn't recall. "It's written down somewhere," she said, laughing heartily.) Rumours said it was a publicity stunt, that she'd tricked a drunken Rodman into a wedding, that the marriage will be annulled.

Astonishingly candid in describing their version of married life to a handful of reporters, Electra agreed it's a version that most would find bizarre.

"I don't really expect anyone to understand it, because you don't really understand it unless you're in it," she says.

Here's how she says it began.

After 10 months of dating, Rodman proposed. Or rather, he sent a friend to their Hard Rock hotel suite to wake Electra up at 7:30 a.m. to relay Rodman's proposal.

"I said, 'If he wants to talk to me, he can come upstairs,' " she says, and he did.

"He said -- let me remember a second what he said -- he said, 'Come on, get dressed.' I'm going, 'What?' He said, 'Put your clothes on. Let's go get married. You want to get married?' I said yes. I didn't think he was serious at first but he was very serious. We hugged each other and I put my clothes on, and off we went."

The bride wore black capri pants. The groom wore jeans, a t-shirt and a baseball cap.

"I've always had the dream of having a huge wedding, a long white gown, friends and family. So it wasn't necessarily the wedding that I dreamed of," she says.

Within days, Rodman's agent Dwight Manley -- he hasn't fired him, but Electra clearly wishes he would -- was calling the marriage a sham. The newlyweds, apart because she'd gone back to work, were bombarded by media, communicating through lawyers. Rodman filed for an annulment.

"We both said maybe we made a mistake, maybe this wasn't right. I mean, this was nuts," she says.

"But then we said, 'What the hell. We're both in the public eye. We should have known something like this was going to happen. We're not going to let it pull us apart.' "

So the annulment's off, but they're back on. However, they still live apart, her in the Beverly Hills house she recently bought -- with her own money, she'll have you know -- and him in his home in Laguna Beach. They spent five days together last week -- again in Vegas -- they talk on the phone daily, and she was expecting him to spend the night last night.

Not that there may not be other obstacles in the way of their true love.

"I don't know if he has boundaries, but I do," she admits.

Such as sexual monogamy?

"Absolutely! I mean, yeah, are you kidding?"

Good luck, you crazy kids. Here's hoping you celebrate your first anniversary next November. If you can just remember the date.


More Artists