“The Marriage of the Decade.” January 14, 1954, Marilyn and Joe tie the knot in San Francisco. Marilyn promised to tell her friend, Fox publicist Harry Brand, when she was going to marry Joe. She did, and he let the word out. Reporters swarmed around the courthouse and the bedlam was so outrageous the judge forgot to kiss the bride. America was agog: the Los Angeles Herald and Express said: “It could only happen here in America, this storybook romance.... Both of them... had to fight their way to fame and fortune and to each other; one in a birthday suit, as a foundling and later as a calendar girl; the other in a... baseball suit.”

The couple traveled to Paso Robles and stayed one night at a motel. Joe, a TV addict, inquired whether the room had a television(!). The next day they left for a mountain hideaway fifty miles from Palm Springs. There was snow on the ground, and they were alone for two weeks. “There wasn’t a television set in the cabin,” Marilyn said. “Joe and I talked a lot. We really got to know each other.”