Bette Midler recalls proposing to her husband 40 years ago and their Vegas wedding
By Lindsay Lowe
July 11, 2024
In her upcoming comedy, “The Fabulous Four,” Bette Midler plays a woman who is about to marry a man she just met — a plotline that echoes her real life.
Midler tied the knot with her husband of 40 years, Argentinian-born Martin von Haselberg, after dating him for about six weeks.
“I am very impulsive,” Midler, 78, told Hoda Kotb on TODAY with Hoda & Jenna on July 11.
The Grammy winner also shared that she proposed to von Haselberg and that they eloped in Las Vegas in the most Vegas way possible.
“We went to Vegas and got married by an Elvis impersonator, always a good idea,” she said.
For decades, the couple didn’t have any photos from their big day, but that changed a few years ago when Las Vegas’ Starlight Chapel rediscovered some snapshots from their impromptu nuptials and sent them to Midler.
“There were no cellphones in 1984. So we had no pictures,” Midler said during an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” in 2021.
“Apparently, there was a photographer there,” she said. “When the Starlight Chapel closed its doors, which was about five years ago, they sent us the pictures. We had never seen the pictures!”
Midler told Hoda it was “astonishing” to reflect on their decades of marriage.
“It’s just like my career. What the hell was that?” she joked.
Midler and von Haselberg share one daughter, actor Sophie von Haselberg, 37.
Read on to learn more about Bette Midler’s husband of four decades.
He’s an actor and performance artist
Von Haselberg once worked as a commodities broker, but he is best known as one-half of the Kipper Kids, a duo known for its experimental performance art.
Throughout the 1970s and beyond, the duo’s acts involved a mixture of slapstick comedy, music and surreal rituals. Their provocative antics included spitting food, throwing paint and making flatulence noises with their mouths, according to Artforum.
Midler worked with her husband on a 1988 HBO special featuring the Kipper Kids, “The Mondo Beyondo Show,” playing an energetic Italian TV host.
The “First Wives Club” star once opened up about what drew her to her husband in an interview with journalist Elisa Leonelli.
“I knew immediately that Martin was outrageous when I first met him,” Midler said. “I liked the fact that he was not afraid to be different, that he was an outsider like I am, that he was not complacent, that he stood aside from the mainstream.”
Von Haselberg has participated in a few of his wife’s projects over the years, including appearing in her 1984 music video for “Beast of Burden” and directing her 1998 music video for “My One True Friend,” according to his IMDb profile.
Midler once called von Haselberg ‘the greatest father who ever lived’
Midler and von Haselberg welcomed their daughter, Sophie von Haselberg, about two years after they married.
Midler called parenting her daughter her “greatest accomplishment” in a 2014 People interview.
“I didn’t do it by myself,” she added. “My husband is probably the greatest father who ever lived. He’s fantastic. He picked up the slack when I was on the road. He taught her a foreign language. He taught her to cook.”
Today, Sophie von Haselberg is an actor who has appeared in film and TV projects including 2015’s “Irrational Man” and 2023’s “American Horror Story: Delicate.”
Sophie von Haselberg has opened up about her close bond with her parents, and revealed that when she got married in 2020, her mom “did all the flowers” and she and her dad did the menu planning.
Von Haselberg has said life with Midler keeps him on his ‘toes all the time’
Martin von Haselberg opened up about his relationship with Midler in a 2023 interview with The Mountains magazine.
He recalled his early determination to make their marriage a success despite having exchanged vows not long after they began dating.
“Even though I didn’t know her at all,” he said, “I remember consciously making the decision that no matter what happens I’m going to keep working at this to make it work. Even if it turns out that she’s not the person I think she might be, I’m just going to keep going through it and making it work.”
When the interviewer asked if Midler’s famously larger-than-life personality was something she “put on” in public, Martin von Haselberg was quick to set the record straight.
“What do you mean, ‘put on’?” he said. “That’s her! She’s just got a very big range, which makes it pretty exciting to live with. It keeps me on my toes all the time. This is not a languid life that I lead with her, believe me. It’s like being on a roller coaster I cannot get off.”
