Some Hollywood couples get married too soon, others never quite get around to it, but David Letterman chose the middle path. The "Late Show" host announced during a taping of his program on Monday that he and longtime girlfriend Regina Lasko got married at the Teton County Courthouse in Choteau, Montana, in a private civil ceremony near their ranch last week.

"Regina and I began dating February of 1986, and I said, 'Well, things are going pretty good; let's just see what happens in about 10 years,' " Letterman, 61, joked during the show about the surprise nuptials with the mother of his 5-year-old son, Harry. He made the announcement after congratulating Bruce Willis for his wedding to British model Emma Heming on Saturday in the Turks and Caicos Islands.

"I had avoided getting married pretty good for, like, 23 years, and I — honestly, whether this happened or not — I secretly felt that men who were married admired me ... like I was the last of the real gunslingers, you know what I'm saying?"

But, Letterman being Letterman, he noted that the wedding day wasn't picture-perfect: His truck got stuck in the mud on the way to the courthouse. "So now we think, 'Well, somebody'll come.' No, nobody comes along. Nobody comes along — it's Thursday afternoon; who's coming along? Zorro? No, nobody. So I get out of the truck and I walk two miles back to the house into a 50-mile-an-hour wind," Letterman said. "It's not Beverly Hills; it's Montana, for God's sakes. And the whole way, I'm thinking, 'See, smart-ass, see, see, you try to get married, this is what happens, see? Well, you got nobody to blame but yourself.' "

Letterman divorced his first wife, Michelle Cook, in 1977.