Raquel Ivonne Figlo got some expert advice on rock ’n’ roll marriages long before Brian Edward Bell proposed last year.
“David Ellefson told me, ‘Go marry a realtor,’” she said. “They’re much more normal.’” Ellefson, a friend and a founder of the band Megadeth, worried that Figlo’s fondness for mosh pits and black leather would cost her a stable love life. For years, she ignored his counsel.
“I dated some rock stars, and I found out their first passion is music,” Figlo said. “But then all of a sudden I was in my 40s, and it was kind of like, OK, what’s going on here?”
Bell, a businessman with his own penchant for thrashing guitars and “rock on” hand gestures, may not have been the normie Ellefson had in mind.
Figlo and Bell connected in September 2019. Bell was to be one of the sponsors for a bon voyage party in Miami for travelers on the Kiss Kruise, a themed fan sea voyage hosted by the iconic ’70s rock band, set to depart in late October.
Figlo, a publicist, had been hired to promote the gathering while working remotely from her home in Mission Viejo, Calif. Bell, who was living in Parrish, Fla., heard about Figlo through Neil McCurry, a friend and business partner of his who had hired Figlo.
Since McCurry seemed like “a nice, successful guy,” Figlo said, she asked if he knew of any handsome and available men. In fact, he did: Bell, who had been single since his fourth divorce five years earlier, sprung to mind. That month, McCurry connected the two via Facebook. Within days, she was on a plane to New York for their first date: lunch at Tavern on the Green followed by a Morrissey concert.
Figlo, 46, was born in La Paz, Bolivia, and grew up in Mission Viejo with a younger brother. She and her mother, Jannethe Figlo, immigrated to the United States when she was 2. “My mother came here with $50 in her pocket and built this beautiful life,” she said. It included a long marriage to James Figlo, an entrepreneur who designed circuit boards before he died in 2018. Long before she graduated from California State University, Fullerton with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communications, she was working to establish her rock ’n’ roll bona fides.
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Her first concert was Def Leppard. “I was 12 or 13, and I was with my mom,” she said. In high school she made a wardrobe out of cut-up band shirts. “I was goth, I was rock, I was metal,” she said. “I was grunge when Nirvana was big. I reflected all the genres.”
Throughout college and after, she found her way to the front row of whatever hard rock shows came through Orange County. But it wasn’t until 2010, after years of working in marketing and branding for her family’s circuit board business, that she felt confident enough to start her own firm, Raquel Figlo Public Relations.
Bell, 61, grew up in Buford, Ga., with two younger sisters and their parents, Frances and Edward Bell, who have both died. After starting as a pool boy at 17, he worked his way up in the hospitality industry to become the director of finance for Stouffer Renaissance Hotels, before being laid off after the company was sold to Marriott in 1996. He later founded two marketing companies and is now the president and chief financial officer of Guaranteed Results Marketing, which does business as Elite Rewards.
Bell has a son, 32, from his first marriage and two adopted children from later marriages. His first marriage was at age 19. “You got out of school, you got married,” he said. “That’s just what you did.” Looking back on his subsequent marriages, he added, “I made brand-new mistakes each time.”
In 2015, his fourth divorce was final. By the time he was introduced to Figlo in 2019, he was less enthusiastic about the institution: “I said I will never get married again.” But Figlo’s social media pictures were “super hot,” he said, and after several lengthy phone calls between Florida and California, he liked her personality, too. “I’m a little bit shy, and she is completely not that. That attracted me.”
On Sept. 7, 2019, Bell and Figlo had their first in-person meet-up in New York; Bell had bought Figlo a round-trip flight from California so the two could attend a Morrissey show at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens. To Bell, flying a stranger across the country didn’t feel like a grand gesture. “My thought was, it’s a good place to get together for a concert,” he said. Figlo was charmed. “He was a true gentleman,” she said.
In October, he arranged an elaborate second date, a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon followed by dinner at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. When she flew back to California after the two-day trip, she was wearing a Cartier Love bracelet he had bought her. “It was all these things women dream of,” she said. But by the end of 2019, both had decided that the long-distance relationship was too difficult to maintain.
For six years, they lost touch. Then, in July 2025, Figlo noticed Bell was regularly checking out her social media stories. “I was like, if he looks one more time, I’m going to reach out to him,” she said. When she posted a flirty picture of herself, he beat her to it. A volley of DMs put them back on the phone that summer. Every day for a month, they talked about how their lives had changed since 2019. They had both been to therapy, an experience they said made them more receptive to marriage.
“I learned the words, ‘What does Raquel want?’” Figlo said. She decided it was a husband “who was kind, caring and loving, and who only had eyes for me.” Bell’s therapist told him that if marriage eventually felt right again, he shouldn’t dismiss the feeling.
Each had changed physically, too. Bell lost 100 pounds on GLP-1 drugs and with the help of a trainer. Figlo lost 20. When they reunited in August at a home Bell owns in Las Vegas, “we both looked hotter,” she said. “I was like, this is not the man I knew six years ago.”
The couple returned to Las Vegas on Sept. 14, 2025, where Bell proposed at the Eiffel Tower Restaurant in the Paris Las Vegas Hotel and Casino. He got down on one knee and presented Figlo with a five-carat diamond ring surrounded by smaller pink diamonds and red rubies. “Everyone cheered for us,” she said.
The wedding they held for 150 guests on June 27 at the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, Calif., was meant to be luxurious with an edge. “The theme was rock ’n’ roll and friendship,” Figlo said. “It was also regal.” The bride wore a custom wedding gown by the Australian designer Leah Da Gloria sewn with 3,000 Swarovski crystals; Bell wore a custom white suit with gold threads.
A live rendition of the Guns N’ Roses song “November Rain” led by Todd Kerns, the bassist and vocalist for Slash featuring Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators, accompanied Figlo on her walk down an outdoor aisle overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Ellefson, who was previously ordained by the Universal Life Church, officiated.
In handwritten vows, Bell promised Figlo he would stand beside her “through every verse and every chorus life brings.” Figlo said that during the years they were apart, “you never truly left my heart.”
When Ellefson pronounced them married, the couple kissed, while guests threw up “rock on” hand signs. A song by the band that had connected them seven years ago at the Miami bon voyage party had been queued up for their recessional.
“We walked out to ‘Rock and Roll All Nite’ by Kiss,” Bell said. “The whole wedding was, like, my dream,” Figlo said.
On This Day
When June 27, 2026
Where The Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel, in Dana Point, Calif.
Metal Tables Kerns’s own band performed throughout the ceremony and cocktail hour. At a rock-themed reception, guests found their way to tables named for bands including Megadeth, Aerosmith and Metallica. Dinner options included filet mignon and sea bass. Red velvet cake and vanilla sponge cake were on the dessert menu.
Hall of Fame Besides Ellefson and Kerns, other rock notables at the wedding included guitarists Jimmie B. Romero and Zach Thorne and Blas Elias, a drummer with the bands Slaughter and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
Homecoming After a honeymoon in Paris, Figlo will move to Bell’s home in Parrish, while keeping her home in Mission Viejo. The couple also plans to split their time between Bell’s house in Las Vegas and the five other homes he owns, including a condominium in Treasure Island, Fla., and a cabin in the mountains in Clayton, Ga.
Not Shy Bell spent $400,000 on the wedding, the couple said, including $60,000 worth of flowers. “I’ve never met another person as over-the-top as me,” Figlo said. That was until she met Bell: “We’re, like, more is better. We do not shy away.”
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