IF you didn’t catch Darva Conger and Rick Rockwell on “Larry King Live,” then you missed the TV interview of the year.
The only joint appearance the oil-and-water newlyweds from “Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire” are ever likely to make was by turns contentious, uncomfortable and surreal.
The dual booking was a coup for the “King” show. It was the first time the ex-emergency room nurse and the self-styled comedian had come face to face since returning from their chaperoned Caribbean honeymoon on Feb. 20, 2000. They were married in prime time on Fox on Feb. 15. She had the marriage annulled in Las Vegas on April 5.
Wednesday night on CNN, Darva kept insisting she’d “moved on” from the “Multimillionaire” fiasco (she uttered some variant of this thought eight times). Although she smiled often, Darva nevertheless seemed pained to be in the same room with Rick.
Rick seemed more happy to be there than she. He claimed he wasn’t bitter or angry over things Darva had said about him during the past year. But then he clashed with her several times, including over the way she characterized him in her annulment application as a “fraud.”
Larry acted as moderator and referee. He twice failed to comprehend Rick’s attempts at off-the-cuff comedy.
That happened as soon as Rick bounded onto the set about 10 minutes into the show. “Hi, Darva,” Rick said, turning his head to look at his former bride.
“Hello, Rick. How are you?” answered Darva, who didn’t turn to look at him.
“I’m doing well,” Rick quipped. “I’ve been worried sick about you!”
“What were you worried about?” asked Larry with a concerned look.
Explained Rick, “I’m joking, Larry.”
To her credit, Darva started out by offering Rick an apology of sorts: “I should never have married you and I’m so sorry that I put myself in that position.”
Rick said he appreciated the gesture, but said he wished she had responded when he “tried to reach out” to her in an attempt to present a united, rather than acrimonious front to the media.
When she said she never got a single message of the many he said he sent her, it was the first of several deep disagreements which flared up between the two.
“I offered the olive branch and said, ‘Let’s face the media together.’ And I got numerous messages to you and you didn’t respond to them. . . .,” Rick said.
Responded Darva, “At what point in time was that? Because I never received a message from you.”
He said he e-mailed her. She said she didn’t have e-mail back then.
And so it went.
He accused her of lifting her televised wedding speech – in which she promised “I will be your friend, your lover and your partner throughout whatever life has to offer us” – from one that had been written and rehearsed by another contestant.
She denied that, and declared that “95 percent” of the contestants would have been just as unwilling to go through with a marriage to Rick as she had been.
In the final analysis, the joint appearance seemed to favor Rick, who came off as self-effacing, while Darva seemed brittle and defensive.
As for their current love lives, Darva has gotten back together with her old boyfriend and Rick said he’s “with a wonderful woman who has my best interests at heart, and I certainly do hers.”
“Didn’t meet her in a television studio?” Larry asked.
“No, I did not,” said Rick.
e-mail: abuckman@nypost.com