Vicki Budinger

Short Biography

Victoria May "Miss Vicki" Budinger (born 1952), briefly famous as Tiny Tim's wife, was seventeen years old when she married the singer, who was more than twice her age, on The Tonight Show on December 17, 1969.The wedding was seen by an estimated 40 million viewers. The cake was seven feet tall, and 10, 000 tulips were used as decoration. The couple honeymooned in Bermuda.The couple met when Budinger, a fan, asked Tiny Tim to sign a book of his poetry at Wanamaker's Department store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on June 3, 1969. He was smitten, tracked her down and arranged another meeting. They conducted long-distance relationship by phone as he toured; he asked her to marry him in August and announced the engagement on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in September. Johnny Carson invited him to have the wedding televised.The couple's first child was stillborn, but the couple had a girl, Tulip Victoria, on May 10, 1971. Against Tim's wishes, Miss Vicki struck out on a modeling career, and began an affair with male model John Carmen. She filed for divorce on March 6, 1972; the divorce was granted in 1977. She gained notoriety when she posed nude for the October 1975 issue of Oui Magazine.She made headlines (as Victoria Lombardi) in 2002 as the girlfriend of Rabbi Fred Neulander, who was on trial for the murder of his wife, and was living in Haddonfield, New Jersey at the time. She was profiled in a February 2, 1995 article in the Chicago Tribune; at that point, she was running a boutique in Maple Shade Township, New Jersey.She was married to a high-school sweetheart (Jon Benson) in the summer of 2006. They live in Savannah, Tn.