Forget being written in the stars — this love was written in the sand.
Such were the beachside vows that Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee exchanged in Cancun, Mexico 30 years ago on Feb. 19, 1995 — just days after their first date.
The nuptials of the ‘90s icons — the bombshell and the bad boy — were straight out of a sweeps episode of “Baywatch.”
The Mötley Crüe drummer had secretly followed Anderson down to Cancun and quickly made his intentions clear on their first date.
“The first thing he said to me was ‘I’m going to marry you,’” Anderson told Larry King in 2002. “And I said, ‘What? No one’s ever said that to me in a first sentence.’”
And sure enough, Lee popped the question just a few days later.
“That night at a disco called the La Boom, I took off my pinky ring, put it on her finger and asked her to marry me,” he said in Mötley Crüe’s 2001 autobiography “The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band.”
“She said yes, hugged me, and stuck her tongue down my throat.”
With the bride wearing a bikini and the groom rocking board shorts, the two got married the very next day after the proposal.
“We asked the hotel to find someone to perform a marriage ceremony,” wrote Lee in the book. “We gave blood, sniffed out a marriage license, and were on the beach getting married before the day was over.”
They sealed the deal by tattooing each other’s names on their ring fingers.
Although their tumultuous marriage would only last until 1998 — while the love affair would be on and off again for years after that — Anderson and Lee were one of the most iconic couples of the ’90s.
“It really was love at first sight,” Anderson told People in 2015. “I only knew him four days before I married him.”
However, they actually met on New Year’s Eve at Hollywood’s Sanctuary, weeks before they got hitched.
“Suddenly, a waitress came over and said, ‘Tommy, here’s a shot of Goldschäger. It’s for you, from Pamela Anderson,’” Lee recalled in his 2004 memoir “Tommyland.”
“I pushed my way into [her] booth, slid over her girlfriends’ laps and forced myself a space right next to her. Then I grabbed her face and just licked the side of it, from chin to temple.”
Face-licking aside, Lee was a gentleman that night. “She was so beautiful, I couldn’t even bring myself to think of defiling here with thoughts of lust,” he wrote. “I just stared at her all night, and she just stared back.”
Indeed, at the end of the night, Lee simply walked Anderson back to her friend’s car, asked for her number and gave her a goodnight kiss.
The two talked on the phone in the weeks before Lee made his surprise move to woo Anderson while she was doing a photo shoot in Cancun.
“We just wanted to have babies and be together forever,” Anderson told People in 2023.
But the honeymoon would turn out to be over after the honeymoon. During a five-day houseboat trip to Lake Mead in Nevada, the newlyweds made the infamous sex tape that would put their marriage to the test after it was stolen by their former electrician Rand Gauthier.
“It ruined lives, starting with our relationship — and it’s unforgivable that people, still to this day, think they can profit from such a terrible experience, let alone a crime,” wrote Anderson in her 2023 memoir “Love, Pamela.”
Anderson went on to give birth to their son Brandon in May 1996, but with tensions from the sex tape and Lee’s drinking taking a toll on their marriage, Anderson filed for divorce six months later. However, they reunited shortly thereafter.
Another son, Dylan, was born in December 1997. But two months later, Lee was arrested and charged with spousal abuse after Anderson accused him of attacking her as she held Dylan. Lee pleaded no contest to spousal abuse and was sentenced to six months in jail.
“I couldn’t understand why Pamela had followed through with pressing charges,” Lee wrote in “The Dirt.” “She was probably scared and thought I was some crazy, violent monster; she probably thought she was doing the right thing for the kids.”
After his release from jail, the now-divorced couple shared a kiss at the World Music Awards and walked the MTV VMAs red carpet together in 1999. They were even discussing remarriage.
“I picture Tommy and me … old, toothless, on a bench somewhere with our tattoos,” Anderson said at the time.
But things fizzled again, with Lee going on to date Mayte Garcia, Prince’s ex-wife, and Anderson having a relationship with Kid Rock, who she would marry.
Still, they continued to hold a special place in each other’s hearts. In 2005, when Lee even participated in Anderson’s Comedy Central roast, he said, “You’ve always been there for me, and your spirit and kindness is an inspiration to me. Like I said 500,000 times, and on that damn sex tape, ‘I f—king love you, baby.’ ”
And in 2008, Lee said they were giving it another shot. “We’ve only given it a try 800 times — 801, here we go,” he told Rolling Stone.
For Anderson — who is up for Best Actress for “The Last Showgirl” at the Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday — “there’s a connection there that will always be.”
“There was Tommy and then there was nobody else,” she told People in 2015. “He was the love of my life.”
In “Love, Pamela,” she wrote, “My relationship with Tommy may have been the only time I was ever truly in love.”
