SEATTLE – The television show "Entertainment Tonight" has won the rights to the planned May wedding of Mary Kay Letourneau (search) and her former sixth-grade pupil Vili Fualaau (search), the father of her two youngest children.
ET and its sister show, "The Insider," planned to begin offering the first in a series of interviews with the couple Thursday. The date and location of the wedding have not yet been disclosed.
Letourneau, 43, served 7½ years in prison after she was convicted of raping Fualaau, 22. She was released last August.
The couple first met when he was in second grade. Their relationship became sexual when he was 12 and she was a 34-year-old married mother of four and an elementary school teacher.
"Entertainment Tonight" is produced by Paramount Domestic Television. Paramount spokesman Manfred Westphal declined to disclose the fee for the wedding rights, but said a reported sum of $500,000 was "ridiculous."
The couple's two daughters — 7-year-old Audrey and 6-year-old Alexis — will be flower girls, Fualaau told ET.
"We're excited to have as many family members involved as possible," Letourneau said, suggesting "special roles" for her two sons and two daughters from her previous marriage.
Fualaau said he proposed to Letourneau "seven or eight years ago."
"She's the same person I fell in love with a long time ago," he said.
Letourneau was pregnant with Fualaau's first child when she was arrested in 1997. She pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree child rape and was sentenced to 7½ years in prison, with all but six months suspended.
Within weeks of her release, she was caught having sex with Fualaau in her car and ordered to serve the rest of her sentence. She gave birth to the couple's second daughter while serving time.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox