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Carmen Electra reveals Dennis Rodman had his security wake her up in Vegas for a surprise proposal
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- Carmen Electra reveals Dennis Rodman had his security wake her up in Vegas for a surprise proposal
Dennis Rodman is known for a great many things, on and off the basketball court.
Aside from his tattoos, colorful hair, antics, and five NBA championships, he is also known for wearing a wedding dress, appearing on WCW and, of course, marrying Carmen Electra .
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And while the NBA Hall of Famer's marriage to actress-model lasted just nine days, it's still something that gets talked about three decades later. Considering the star power of the people involved, it's still one of the most unforgettable and pop-culturally iconic unions in celebrity and even sports history.
And to nobody's surprise, the wedding was quite spontaneous, for the lack of a better term.
In fact, Electra herself revealed that Rodman proposed to her in Las Vegas, just as she was trying to get some sleep before flying out to Los Angeles early the next morning.
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Waking up to a proposal
On her recent appearance on Brooke Goff's Legally Goff podcast, Electra detailed the events leading up to their Las Vegas wedding.
"This is the story. So, we were in Vegas. It was a typical night out with Dennis at the strip club. We're drinking blah blah blah. I have to get back to LA the next morning, get on a plane because I was shooting a calendar…so, it's a long day of shooting and I went back to the room. Dennis went down to gamble, I'm asleep in the bed," she recalled .
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Instead of getting some much-needed shut-eye, Electra got quite the surprise.
"Dennis' security guard walks upstairs, wakes me up, and says, 'Dennis wants to marry you,' I'm like, 'I'm asleep. You're going to have to leave. I'm asleep. I got to get up. I got to go to work tomorrow in LA. I got to get on a plane,' So, he leaves. Dennis comes up. 'Mama!' He used to call me mama. 'Mama, mama, come on, mama! Let's just get married. Let's just do it, mama. Come on. Let's go! Let's get married, mama!' And I'm like, 'Dennis, go gamble. I'm sleeping.' He leaves," Electra continued.
As he was on the basketball court, Rodman wasn't one to give up on a play, and he surely wasn't going to give up on getting Electra to marry him.
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"He comes back in. He picks me up out of the bed…he took one of the rings he had bought me off my finger, put it on my finger again, and said, 'Mama, marry me,' And I was like, 'I don't know. I don't know. I just didn't know like how are we going to do this?'" Electra said.
As it turns out, Rodman wasn't alone, as he brought along a few of his and Electra's friends to help with the convincing.
"All of his friends were there and a bunch of my friends were there, they all came into the room. They're like, 'Come on, do it.' And I'm like, 'Okay.' He goes, 'Well, get dressed. Get dressed." So, I'm like, okay, I'm putting on my slutty little outfit that I wore like and we're really going to do this," she added.
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The two ended up getting married in November of 1998 at the Chapel of Flowers, as Electra recalled. The rest, as they say, is history — at least for the next nine days.
The aftermath
A little over a week after getting married, Rodman filed for annulment, claiming that he wasn't thinking clearly when he and Electra got married.
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The two didn't split immediately, however, as they apparently remained together for a while. The two officially parted ways in April of the following year.
Most of today's fans won't fully understand just how big a story Rodman and Electra getting together and getting married was back in the 1990s. They were two of the biggest celebrities in the world, and every move they made made tabloid headlines — or went viral, so to speak.
Imagine the most controversial player in the league getting with one of the hottest models in the world. That's surely going to dominate social media headlines.
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This story was originally published by Basketball Network on Jun 13, 2026, where it first appeared in the Off The Court section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
