Relationship Reality Show Stars: Now and Then

Bob Eubanks was the original host of The Newlywed Game, which debuted in 1966, and along with The Dating Game (1965) was among the first shows to talk about relationships and sex on national TV. "Newlyweds was the first time that we looked into people's bedrooms," Eubanks said. He added that they had a hard time getting sponsors because it was considered a "dirty show." In fact, it was so risqué that the euphemism "making whoopee" became the show's catchphrase. Eubanks explained the backstory:

"They wanted me to say 'make love' and I wouldn't say 'make love' because I didn’t think you should have to tell your children what that meant until you were ready to do so. So I refused to say 'make love' and that's why we came up with 'whoopee'."

Chuck Woolery was the first host of Love Connection from 1983 to 1994 before hosting the last two seasons of The Dating Game from 1997 to 1999. One of Woolery's most famous interactions — "It'll be on my tombstone," he quipped — was when he asked, "Where's the strangest place you've made whoopee?" And a woman responded, "In the butt, Bob, definitely in the butt." When prompted to share more about the story he explained:

"There was this girl from Pennsylvania named Olga, and I asked her the strangest place she'd ever made whoopee and she said, 'In the ass.' When they did the Chuck Barris movie Confessions of a Dangerous Mind they called her and they said, 'Olga we're going to put the clip in the movie.' She says, 'Please don't, I'm a grandmother.' They said, 'Well, it's worth $5,000.' She said, 'You put that sucker in!'"

On how dating shows have evolved, Woolery added this anecdote about when he was coming up with the approach to Love Connection in the early '80s:

"The sex part isn't important — and I still think this is true today — because that's the end of the game. The game is how you meet, how you relate to each other, how it develops, where it goes, and that's what it's about. It's the story that counts. In fact, people would say 'Well, Chuck when we woke up the next morning,' and that's about as close to 'We had sex' as we ever got on the show."

But kissing, kissing is "everything," he said. "People can't kiss today, it's amazing."

I know it's hard to imagine a time before The Bachelor, but the show that really started it all was Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire? in 2000. The whole thing went down in just a single two-hour show and was more like a beauty pageant with the judge (and prize?) being Rick Rockwell. He married the winner, Darva Conger, at the end of the episode.

The real drama came after the show aired, when it was questioned if Rockwell actually was a millionaire (the toilet in the backyard was a dead giveaway) and it came out that a former girlfriend had filed a restraining order against him for domestic violence. After the inevitable annulment, Conger posed nude for Playboy. She remarried and had one son, but has since divorced and now works as a nurse anesthetist.

Despite her rocky televised past, Conger has no regrets. She said:

"Yes, it was a very stressful experience, and yes, I had some rough times. I have no regrets. I had a wild moment, I did something crazy and completely out of character for me. I made a mistake, and I made a mistake on national television. I do anesthesia for a living now — I don't make mistakes when I do that. I know what the important things are in life. A moment in time does not define who I am."

Joe Millionaire who?! A year after The Bachelor premiered in 2002, a show with a similar concept, Joe Millionaire, kicked off, but with a twist. It starred Evan Marriott as a "millionaire" looking for love, but in reality he was just a construction worker. The premise was that he'd admit the truth to the final woman, and if she still wanted to be with him the show would give them a check for $1 million. Zora Andrich was his final pick, and even though she stayed with him, they ended up breaking things off.

Now Marriott — who works as a contractor — looks like a totally different person, joking with Darva Conger that she should just "grow a beard, you won't get recognized." He said that after the show he felt aimless, but his friends rallied together and gave him a little intervention, and he had a "come to Jesus moment." He said:

"I started a business for myself, and everything is great. I did my first job . . . I got it and literally almost was in tears. I called my dad and said, 'I feel like I've just been paroled. This is where I should have been.'"

"Speidi," aka Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, have made the reality TV rounds as a couple many people have loved to hate first on The Hills in 2006, then on I'm a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!, Celebrity Big Brother, and Marriage Boot Camp: Reality Stars. But the craziest thing is that despite their relationship drama being consistently played out on screen, the married couple (they tied the knot in April 2009) is still going strong. On creating a successful marriage "against the odds," Pratt said:

"Having the perception of being not so liked in the media and the public made our marriage stronger because when it seems like no one else likes you, you're like, 'Well I love you!' So I feel like that really brought us together, when it felt like it was only us on the planet and everybody else is like 'We hate you.'

Other than that, very few jobs you spend every minute with your wife. I always say, my parents have been married 40 years, but I feel like I've spent more time with my wife then my own parents have because my dad goes to work at 7 a.m. and comes home at 7 p.m. Whereas, Heidi and I wake up and are like, 'Hey! How are you again? That was fun last night! Have a good day!' So we definitely spend a lot of time together."

But what are they up to now? Montag filled us in (and you might be surprised):

"We moved up to Santa Barbara and took a few years to be like 'OK, who are we? What do we want to do? Let's really work on our real relationships with family members and figure things out.' Spencer went back to school, and he just graduated from USC with a political science degree. I was his notetaker in class, so that was fun, too."

Yes, she went to all his classes with him.

"He wasn't going to go! We would drive from Santa Barbara to LA, and that's a long commute. So I had to be there to help him. But we've maintained two lives. We have a character, Speidi, and then it's our real marriage. For us, it's two different worlds that we've been able to kind of separate at the same time. But we're always a team. We get to go on as a team. We get to work together, and that always continues to strengthen us."