False Start

Even in Hollywood, where celebrity marriages, like sitcoms, tend to last only a few seasons, this one had a stunningly short run. On Jan. 3, just seven months after staging a spur-of-the-moment wedding on the Hawaiian island of Lanai, actress Courtney Thorne-Smith announced that she and her husband, genetic scientist Andrew Conrad, have "mutually decided to separate," adding that no third parties were involved. Friends who had witnessed the three-year courtship of the former Ally McBeal star and her beau were all but speechless. "To be honest," says one intimate, "I am as confused as the next guy."
     Also taken by surprise were the editors of IN STYLE WEDDINGS (a sister publication to PEOPLE), which had hit the newsstands a week earlier with Thorne-Smith, 33, on the cover in her bridal gown. Still, says the magazine's managing editor Martha Nelson, "Whatever we're going through, it is not as bad as whatever she is going through."
     Though Conrad, 37, and his wife's former Melrose Place co-star Rob Estes were high school friends, Conrad and Thorne-Smith didn't meet until 1997, when her sister Jennifer fixed them up. They became engaged in October 1998, but their June 1 wedding was so impromptu that they hadn't even procured a marriage license. Now, no one knows what will become of the $1 million-plus lot that they bought in Lanai, where they planned to build their dream house.