Stern: Anna And I Were Planning A Wedding

In First Interview, Partner Howard K. Stern Said They Were To Wed In Two Weeks

(CBS/AP)  Howard K. Stern says that he and Anna Nicole Smith were planning to wed in a top-secret ceremony this month. The couple exchanged vows in a commitment ceremony in September, but it was not a legal wedding.

"We were going to make everything legally binding in less than two weeks," he told "The Insider" and "Entertainment Tonight" on a private jet bound for the Bahamas this weekend. "I can't even talk about it."

Stern said he was so overcome with grief after Smith's death Thursday in Hollywood, Fla., that he spent 36 hours in a row lying in bed in his hotel room.

He said he only got out of bed so he could be reunited in the Bahamas with Smith's 5-month-old baby, Dannielynn. Stern is listed as the father on the baby's birth certificate, but two other men have claimed paternity

"I have to be strong," said a tearful Stern. "For Dannielynn and to protect Anna. (Dannielynn) is the only reason why I'm still on this earth. Anna was my whole world. Every minute of every day she was my best friend, my lover."

Stern vowed that he will fight to keep custody of Dannielynn.

2"They aren't going to take my baby. They are not going to take Anna's baby, never," Stern said.

Stern was not with the former Playboy playmate when she died but he knew she was very sick, his sister says.

Stern had told his sister that Smith was running a fever of 105 degrees shortly before her death on Thursday, and that a nurse was "icing her down" earlier that day at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida.

"When he left her, she was sleeping," Bonnie Stern said.

He had been gone only about two hours when news reached him that Smith was dead, she said. A private nurse had called the emergency dispatcher after finding the former model unresponsive.

Smith's former boyfriend, Larry Birkhead, has filed a suit claiming he is the father of Dannielynn, and Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband, Prince Frederic von Anhalt, said Monday he will also file a claim of paternity.

Meanwhile, the New York Daily News reported Saturday that a manuscript written by Smith's half-sister, Donna Hogan, says Smith may have used the frozen sperm of her late husband, 90-year-old billionaire J. Howard Marshall II, to impregnate herself.

Stern told "Entertainment Tonight" that he's fighting to keep Smith's estranged mother, Virgie Arthur, from gaining custody of the baby.

"Anna, she despised that woman," Stern said. "Despised that woman."

Asked if he had a message for Smith's fans, Stern said that he would want them to pray for her.

"I want them to pray that she is safe. And she is happy with Daniel. That's it," he said. "I just want her to be with Daniel and I hope now that they are happy. I just hope that, wherever she is, that she doesn't have that. After everything that she's been dragged through here in this life, it wasn't fair. She's such a wonderful person."