Apparently, It Does pay to advertise. When Michael Modzelewski, a November 1991 Cosmopolitan Bachelor-of-the-month, was interviewed for our March 1992 issue ("Fresh Meat"), he insisted he had accepted Cosmo's honor in order to help publicize his wilderness memoir, Inside Passage: Living with Killer Whales, Bald Eagles and Kwakiutl Indians.
Four thousand women responded to Modzelewski's photo - and a few did buy his book. But less than a year later, he gave up all the blind dates for love and unlimited free miles.
In September, he married Paula Grecco, 39, a former Playboy Bunny (who donned the ears and tail to support her two children after an alimony-less divorce). She has attended seven culinary schools, dated Dustin Hoffman and set up house with MacGyver (actor Richard Dean Anderson). Now she works as a Phoenix-based flight attendant, hence the free plane tickets for Modzelewski. For their first date, Grecco flew Modzelewski to Aruba for a romantic lunch. For their second date, Modzelewski staged an elaborate treasure hunt in a San Francisco hotel room that included long-stemmed roses, slinky lingerie hidden under pillows and a bathtub filled with iced champagne and platters of raw oysters and sushi. Other dates landed them in Paris, Greece and Austria. "She's a feminine feminist," explains Modzelewski. "Unlike many women who take on the characteristics they shun in men, Paula can deal in a man's world but still be very much a woman."
The couple, who have four previous marriages between them, will maintain separate residences in California and Arizona; they keep in touch via spicy letters and erotic faxes. They also plan to hit the nationally syndicated television talk-show circuit with their story. (Joan Rivers and Jenny Jones are already interested; Modzelewski cut his teeth on Bill Cosby's new show, You Bet Your Life, during his Cosmo phase). Modzelewski's San Francisco literary agent is hoping the exposure will precipitate bids for Modzelewski's new book, Lookin' for Rhett: Romance in the '90s, a chronicle of his Bachelor-of-the-Month adventures. Robert Greenwald Productions in Hollywood is considering turning the as yet unpublished manuscript into a TV movie, with a series to follow.