Letterman got married! Here's what he said ....

Audio: Shari Elliker and I discussed Dave's getting hitched Tuesday morning on WBAL in Baltimore. (Shari wanted to know: Why now?)
It didn't take long for astonished watchers of the CBS closed-circuit feed this evening to start texting the news about the amazing announcement David Letterman made during tonight's "Late Show" taping:

Last week he made an honest woman of his longtime girlfriend Regina Lasko.

The context isn't that clear from Bill Carter's report on the Times website, so I asked a show rep for clarification. Here's what happened this evening at the Ed Sullivan Theater:

Dave was at his desk, post-monologue, going over his guest list for that night, which included Bruce Willis, and Dave mentioned the fact that Bruce had just gotten himself re-hitched. And oh by the way, he added, "On Thursday, at 3 p.m., March 19, 2009, at the Teton County Courthouse in Choteau, Montana, I was married to Regina Lasko."

Choteau's about halfway between Great Falls and Glacier Park, in some of the prettier parts of Montana (my home state).

Anyway, Dave continued ...

"Regina and I began dating in February of 1986, and I said, 'Well, things are going pretty good, let's just see what happens in about ten years....'

"I had avoided getting married pretty good for, like, 23 years and I - honestly, whether this happened or not - I secretly felt that men who were married admired me ... like I was the last of the real gunslingers, you know what I'm saying?"

(His marriage to Michelle Cook fell apart in 1977.)

"So now, we get ready to go and we've got to drive into the courthouse and it's muddy, and we're supposed to be there at 2, and it's me, Regina and Harry in the truck, in the pickup truck. ... So we get two miles from the house and we get stuck in the mud - I mean, turn the truck over, stuck in the mud. So now we think, 'Well, somebody'll come.' No, nobody comes along. Nobody comes along - it's Thursday afternoon, who's coming along, Zorro? No, nobody.

"So I get out of the truck and I walk two miles back to the house into a 50 mile an hour wind. It's not Beverly Hills, it's Montana, for God's sakes. And the whole way, I'm thinking, 'See, smartass, see, see, you try to get married, this is what happens. See, well, you've got nobody to blame but yourself. Could have happened any other day, but you wait now, see, this is what you get.'

"So then we get in the car and Harry says, 'Are we still going into town?' and I said, 'Yes, we are,' and he gets very upset because Mom had told him if I wasn't back in an hour, the deal was off."

Show airs tonight.

P.S. What are the odds that Dave would decide to make the biggest news that Teton County has had in five and a half years ... the very week that this animated short comes out about the last big adventure Dave had out there?