Gary Coleman reveals his secret nuptials

Jet, March 3, 2008 by Margena A. Christian

Former child TV star Gary Coleman once swore that he would never get married. Well, the former "Diff'rent Strokes" star is now eating his words after revealing that he secretly wed in August on a mountaintop in Nevada.

"Nobody was around but the minister, preacher, the videographers, the photographer, the helicopter pilot and us," Coleman, 40, told TV's "Inside Edition," about his clandestine union with 22-year-old Shannon Price.

Coleman, in 1999, told US Magazine that he would never get married (JET, Feb. 8, 1999).

"Since I was 12, I knew I wouldn't be married. I fear somebody would marry me just to get next to what they believe is a lot of money ... As far as I'm concerned, being single is the only way to go," he once said.

Price, who met Coleman on the set of the 2006 spoof comedy "Church Ball," admitted that she proposed to the diminutive actor. On her birthday, she said, he surprised her by taking her to Nevada's Valley of Fire State Park to get married.

Price, who is 5-foot-7, and Coleman, who is 4-foot-8, don't care about the height or age differences, they say.

"I don't have issues with age," said Coleman. "I have issues with intelligence ... She's more intelligent than I am and that's what matters to me."

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Price said about their heights, "That doesn't really matter to me. He was 10 feet tall to me because he was sweet and I really liked his personality."

A former self-proclaimed virgin, Coleman once said: "See, people don't understand that something has given me the willpower to say no to anything questionable, abhorrent, undermining, unethical and immoral ... And that's why I'm still a virgin. I don't know where this willpower comes from. But I use it."

No longer a virgin, Coleman said, "I wasn't saving myself. She just happened to be the one."

--Margena A. Christian with AP reports