The Rolling Stones were the biggest rock band in the world in 1979 when the lead guitarist, Keith Richards, met model Patti Hanson — where else? — at Studio 54 discotheque in New York City. Richards was 35, while Hansen was celebrating her 23rd birthday on the night they met. But she was already famous, too, having appeared on the cover of the American edition of Vogue on 12 separate occasions between 1975 and 1978. Richards, immediately smitten, sent over a bottle of Dom Pérignon Champagne. 

Their marriage, however, wouldn’t take place for another four years, over 2,000 miles away in the small town of Cabo San Lucas, still in its formative phase as a tourist destination. The area boasted only half a dozen or so hotels, but was by no means unknown in celebrity circles or among the world’s wealthy elite.

Setting the stage

Erle Halliburton, founder of the eponymous multinational oil company, had cruised to Cabo San Lucas from Corpus Christi, Texas, as early as 1938 aboard his newly launched 160-foot yacht Vida. Among those along for the ride was his son, David, who spent so much time splashing about in the local waters that Erle was heard to remark, “The kid’s a twin of a dolphin.”

By 1945, the year the Second World War ended, Halliburton’s company had drilled over 80,000 wells worldwide. But he and his family never forgot Cabo San Lucas. His son, David Sr., returned so often on fishing trips over the years — accompanied by celebrity friends like Barron Hilton, Dean Martin and John Wayne — that he ultimately decided to build a resort so their wives could accompany them and enjoy comfortable accommodations.  

Thus, in 1977, the Hotel Twin Dolphin was opened by the man who had acquired the same nickname 39 years earlier. The 50-room resort was an expanded, updated version of the original Hotel Bajo Colorado, built seven years earlier near Bahía Santa María. It was immediately recognized as one of the premier properties in the region. Celebrities, notably, embraced it. Not just David Sr.’s famous fishing buddies, Dino and the Duke, but other big-name stars as well. 

Richards and Hansen must have felt right at home when they arrived in late 1983. It was, after all, a place accustomed to catering to the whims of famous guests, a task no doubt made easier by the fact that the two were clearly in love. 

“I loved her soul and knew in my heart I wanted to make this thing legitimate,” Richards remembered in his 2010 autobiography, “Life,” co-written with James Fox. “And I was coming up to my 40th birthday. What was more appropriate? We’d been shooting videos in Mexico City for ‘Undercover of the Night,’ with Julian Temple, who shot many of our videos in those days. We shot three or four in Mexico while we were there. And at the end, I decided, right, fuck it, time off, go down to Cabo San Lucas.”

A memorable proposal

The Rolling Stones had been performing since 1962 and had been regularly touring the U.S. since 1964. As a consequence, Richards had made friends in all parts of the country. Indeed, a fledgling member of his “Southwest crew” would play a key part in the proposal. That was Gregorio Azar, whose family had founded the successful Azar Nut Company, headquartered in El Paso. Azar had a house in Cabo San Lucas and although he had never met Richards before, the two had enough mutual friends that they soon began hanging out. 

One night, on Azar’s roof, Richards asked Hansen to marry him, setting the date to coincide with his 40th birthday: Dec. 18, 1983. Her response was immediate and violently enthusiastic. 

“She said, Do you mean it?” Richards related in “Life.” “I said yeah. Immediately, she jumped on my back. I didn’t feel anything, but I heard something go snap and I looked down and there’s two beautiful fountains of blood coming out from behind my toenail. Within five seconds of me saying yeah, I mean it, she broke my toe. Next time it’ll be the heart, right? Half an hour later, it had started to throb and then I was on a crutch for the next two weeks. 

“A few days before our wedding day, I found myself running through the Mexican desert on a crutch with a black coat and chasers on. We’d had a fight, Patti and I, some premarriage thing, I don’t know what it was about, but here I was, hobbling through cacti, chasing her into the desert. ‘Come here, you bitch!’ like Long John Silver.”

The day of the wedding

The venue chosen for the wedding was not the Twin Dolphin, where Richards and Hansen stayed for the entirety of their visit. But another iconic Los Cabos property: the Hotel Finisterra. It was opened in Cabo San Lucas in 1972 by pioneer hotel builders Luis Cóppola Bonillas and Luis Bulnes Molleda. The former was a former war hero and Trans Mar de Cortés pilot turned hotelier who had invested in and helped build some of the area’s most famous early hotels. The latter was the former cannery manager, a native of Ribadesella, Spain, who, two years after helping open the Finisterra, would premiere Hotel Solmar at Land’s End, the first of what would become Los Cabos’ only homegrown hotel chain. 

The Finisterra, or “Land’s End,” was and still is a remarkable property. Built on a ridge overlooking both the Pacific Ocean and the Cabo San Lucas Marina — completed the same year as the wedding — it’s as picturesque a location for a wedding as any on Earth. 

Richards and Hansen were married in Finisterra’s Whale Watchers Bar on a Sunday afternoon amid friends and family that had flown in for the occasion. The Rolling Stones’ frontman, Mick Jagger, for instance, arrived from Barbados the night before the event and acted as best man. Richards’ parents were also there, as were several members of Hansen’s family. The wedding itself was officiated by a local civil registrar, Mercedes Ceseña Chong, who noted to United Press International (UPI) beforehand: “It will be a wedding like any other, under the same laws that Mexicans marry, even though it has to do with an important artistic personality.”

Naturally enough, given the rock star participants, music was a big part of the proceedings. “Let’s have some music,” Richards was heard to say as the ceremony concluded and traditional Mexican songs accompanied both ceremony and reception, the latter held at a local trailer park, El Faro Viejo, where a mariachi band performed. 

A melancholy honeymoon 

Richards and Hansen had been in Los Cabos for a month before the wedding took place and Richards at least seemed loath to leave afterward. “When Keith came down for his wedding, he’d planned to stay for a week, but didn’t leave for three months,” Sammy Hagar confided in his autobiography, “Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock.” 

“His family went back after a couple of weeks, but he stayed, sleeping on people’s floors. Jorge Viaña, the bellman at the Twin Dolphin who eventually became the manager of Cabo Wabo, took Keith everywhere. Keith liked to sit in with the mariachi bands. They didn’t know who he was, this crazy gringo in the rock-and-roll clothes, but he was drinking tequila straight from the bottle and handing out $100 bills, so they loved him.”

He had also run into more old friends courtesy of a tip from Azar. Namely, the German couple Uschi Obermaier and Dieter Bockhorn, a fashion model and a former bar owner, who were renowned in counterculture lore for driving a Mercedes bus, fur-lined and with a sauna, along the old hippie trail through Afghanistan, Turkey and India.

The fabled bus had somehow made it to Cabo San Lucas by 1983 and Richards met up with the two on the eve of his wedding. Less than two weeks later, however, on New Year’s Eve, Bockhorn died tragically after crashing his motorcycle into a truck. According to Richards, he was “killed on his motorcycle, his severed head still in his helmet, on one side of the road; his body had gone over the bridge.”

It was a macabre close to what had been a long and life-changing visit.

A lasting legacy

The Hotel Twin Dolphin was closed by 2006. El Faro Viejo RV Park by 2008. The Sandos Finisterra, meanwhile, remains open, and guests today can still see mementos, like the ceremonial coffee urn, used during the celebrated nuptials. The most important legacy of the Richards and Hansen wedding, however, was the rock stars it inspired to make Los Cabos a part of their lives. Hagar was the most famous of these. 

“In December 1983, I saw a photograph in People magazine from the wedding of Keith Richards and Patti Hansen,” he later reminisced. “They were standing poolside at the Twin Dolphin … and I thought it looked cool. He has always been one of my heroes, and told Betsy we should go down, check the place out. 

“There was only one flight a week — one flight in, one flight out — with dirt roads all the way from the airport to the Twin Dolphin. There were no telephones, no newspapers, no televisions, and no air-conditioning. To make a phone call, you had to go to the phone company downtown and pay by the minute after they placed the call for you.”

Hagar had joined Van Halen and was touring with the band by 1989. Meanwhile, a new nightclub called Cabo Wabo Cantina was being built in Cabo San Lucas. Hagar had approved the construction plans provided by local developer Marco Monroy, but all four band members had ownership stakes. By 1990, it was ready to open, which it did with massive amounts of promotion from MTV, which flew in contest winners and filmed the opening concert at the nightclub on April 22.

Hagar bought out the other members of Van Halen by 1994, but other rock stars were happy to visit, with many joining him onstage during his annual birthday shows. As the years went by, country music stars also fell in love with Los Cabos, with many getting their first taste via performances at Cabo Wabo. Naturally, songs extolling Los Cabos’ virtues soon followed — from Toby Keith’s “Cabo San Lucas” and Merle Haggard’s seasonal classic “Christmas in Cabo San Lucas” to Kenny Chesney’s “Beer in Mexico,” which was written during a vacation to the area. 

In this way, Richards and Hansen’s wedding helped to put Los Cabos on the map, not only for musicians but for millions of their fans worldwide. 

Chris Sands is the Cabo San Lucas local expert for the USA Today travel website 10 Best, writer of Fodor’s Los Cabos travel guidebook and a contributor to numerous websites and publications, including Tasting Table, Marriott Bonvoy Traveler, Forbes Travel Guide, Porthole Cruise, Cabo Living and Mexico News Daily.