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The claim

It's a myth divorcees tossed rings off Reno bridge into the Truckee River.

The background

Robert Welty of Reno wrote a letter to the editorpublished last week saying:

"Please be advised that I'm an 80 year old native Nevadan, and as such, I am really sick and tired of reading the perpetuation of the long standing, but to date unproven and disputed, rumor that newly divorced women threw their wedding rings off the old Virginia Street Bridge! Never happened!

"Your story is a good one except your coverage stating the following: 'Linda Marino, 67, has lived in Reno for 20 years and recalls divorced women throwing their wedding rings in the Truckee River.'

"I feel very certain Linda Marino never actually witnessed anyone throwing a ring off the Virginia Street Bridge.

"This phony story and rumor was around 70 years ago and I, as a 10-year-old youth, searched the river bottom in low water times, as did my friend and neighbors. No rings ever found.

"The bridge is history. Let's make this unproven rumor history as well!"

Marino called the RGJ to say otherwise. She said she went with a newly divorced friend in the early 1970s to the bridge and the friend tossed her ring off.

She insists she witnessed it personally.

Faye Hart of Reno also called. She told Fact Checker: "I am one of those divorcees who threw their rings in the water."

She did it in 1978.

"I'd just left the divorce court. I'd worn it for 25 years, 5 months and 2 days and figured it wasn't doing me any good so why not?" she said. "So I just threw it in the river and told the fish to enjoy it."

Hart said she doesn't remember where she learned about the ring-tossing ritual. Some have speculated it started with the 1961 film "The Misfits" where Marilyn Monroe's character thinks about throwing her ring into the Truckee.

Nevada historian Guy Rocha goes back further. In a Reno Gazette-Journal column published in 2008, he writes, "The first-known account of throwing wedding rings into the Truckee River (is) in the pamphlet titled: 'Reno! 'It Won't Be Long Now' NINETY DAYS AND FREEDOM' " from 1927.

This topic of freedom in Reno refers to the city's liberal divorce laws, which allowed couples to get divorced after a short residency of three months, often spent in a hotel casino. (The time was shortened even more later.) Other locations in the first half of the 20th century made divorce much harder and required much longer waits before finalizing the decision. This made Reno especially popular among people who needed a divorce before they could marry someone else.

Rocha wrote that an early pop culture reference to tossing wedding rings into the Truckee River occurs in Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.'s 1929 book "Reno." A movie of the book released in 1930 "first introduced movie-goers to Truckee River ring-flinging," Rocha said.

A 1931 book called "The Reno Divorce Racket" has a photograph of Marjorie MacArthur and Dorothy Foltz throwing their wedding rings into the river, Rocha reported.

Many stories in magazines and newspapers followed, some debunking the trend, others celebrating it.

Rocha mentions a 1950 United Press news story about 50 Junior Chamber of Commerce volunteers cleaning the river and finding one — but only one — wedding ring.

Rocha concluded, "The 'tradition' might have been fakelore originating in promotional literature, then reinforced many times by publicity gimmicks. While not common practice, real wedding rings found their way into the Truckee because some divorcées acted on what they believed to be a tradition."

The verdict

Although the practice of celebrating a divorce by throwing one's wedding ring into the Truckee River was never as widespread as media stories and movies made it seem, it did happen. In other words, Welty's claim that it "never happened" is untrue.

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