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Written on a dry-cleaning ticket, the note is signed "your wife (for life)"; in the end, the couple's marriage only lasted nine months.

"Dear Joe, I know I was wrong! I acted the way I did and said the things I did because I was hurt - not because I meant them-and it was stupid of me to be hurt because actually there wasn't enough reason-in fact no reason at all," Monroe writes.

"Please accept my apology and don't, don't, don't, don't be angry with your baby-she loves you. Lovingly, your wife (for life) Mrs. J.P. DiMaggio."

As auction house Christie's notes in its listing, the letter reflects the "loving and yet challenging relationship" between the two American cultural icons. Read on to learn more about how their marriage began and ended - and why divorce didn't spell an end to their story.

She was a star of the big screen, riding a dizzying career trajectory; he was a star of the field, counted among the best baseballers his country had ever seen. It was almost laughably perfect.

It may have been the ultimate 'all-American' coupling, but Monroe and DiMaggio's romance was anything but perfect. Marrying in 1954, the couple split just nine months later. However, their story didn't end there.

The meeting

In 1952, DiMaggio and Monroe were introduced on a blind date. At the time, DiMaggio - 12 years Monroe's senior - was six months into his retirement from the Yankees. At 26, she was steadily rising through the ranks in Hollywood.

In her autobiography , Monroe admitted she had been reluctant to meet the athlete because she expected him to be a "flashy New York sports type".

However, Dimaggio treated her "like something special" and she was surprised by her feelings towards him, writing: "[I]nstead I met this reserved guy who didn't make a pass at me right away. I had dinner with him almost every night for two weeks."

One complication in those early months was distance; the pair's work kept them on opposites sides of the US - Monroe on the west coast, DiMaggio on the east.

In , Monroe explains the arrangement, and society's view of it, was a major factor in their discussions about marriage.

"We knew it wouldn't be an easy marriage. On the other hand we couldn't keep going forever as a pair of Cross-country lovers. It might begin to hurt both our careers," she wrote.

"After much talk Joe and I decided that since we couldn't give each other up, marriage was the only solution to the problem."

She also noted that she and DiMaggio were "very much alike", despite their differences. "What Joe is to me is a man whose looks, and character, I love with all my heart."

The marriage

Following an engagement on New Year's Eve 1953, Monroe and DiMaggio married days later in a civil ceremony at San Francisco City Hall on January 14, 1954. They were mobbed by reporters.

It was the second wedding for both. Before her acting career began, Monroe was married to Jim Dougherty, a family friend, from 1942 to 1946. DiMaggio had been in a five-year marriage with actress Dorothy Arnold, with whom he had a son, Joe Jr.

They spent their honeymoon in Japan, as DiMaggio was already heading to the country for a business trip.

During the holiday, Monroe was asked by the United States Army to entertain the troops in Korea. She went ahead with the trip, dazzling the soldiers with live musical performances in a four-day tour.

On her return to Japan, according to Richard Ben Cramer's Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life Monroe told her husband of the rapturous response she'd received, declaring: "Joe, you never heard such cheering." In response, he said, "Yes, I have."

It's believed the Korea trip sparked fights between the couple for the rest of their honeymoon.

The nine months the couple were married were reportedly teeming with tension. Their issues largely stemmed from contrasting expectations of one another's role in the relationship.

There are also plenty of claims of jealousy and possessiveness on DiMaggio's part over Monroe's skyrocketing fame, and discomfort with her bombshell Hollywood image. He reportedly wanted her to get out of acting altogether.

The classic scene in The Seven Year Itch in which Monroe's white dress flutters over a New York subway grate was reportedly the final straw for DiMaggio, who was "livid" by the image.

A friend of the late baseballer has since claimed the marriage ended because the couple wanted children but Monroe was unable to bear them.

"From Joe's point of view, they didn't stay married because Marilyn was not able to have children ... It was not about the published reports of jealousy and not wanting to take a back seat to her fame," Dr. Rock Positano, author of Dinner With DiMaggio, told .

The divorce

On October 6, 1954, Monroe - her attorney standing by her side - announced to reporters that she intended to divorce DiMaggio on the grounds of 'mental cruelty'.

LIFE magazine reported at the time: "Almost nobody professed surprised when they broke up. The conflict in their two careers seemed inevitable."

DiMaggio never wed again, while Monroe went on to marry playwright Arthur Miller.

The reconciliation

Following Monroe's separation from Miller in 1960, she and DiMaggio reconnected. On Christmas Eve 1960, the actress noted in a letter that her ex-husband had sent her "a forest-full of poinsettias" along with a card reading "Best, Joe".

LIFE magazine reports: "DiMaggio came back into her life and, by all accounts, desperately tried to bring some stability and calm to an existence that was veering dangerously out of control."

At the time, the Gentlemen Prefer Blondes star was struggling with drug and alcohol addition and health issues.

"It was Joe DiMaggio who rescued her, swooping in against the objections of the doctors and nurses and removing her from the ward," reports.

There are claims DiMaggio hoped to rekindle their romance, even asking Monroe to marry him again.

He was also 'protective' of her, and was said to be furious with mutual friend Frank Sinatra for introducing her to John F. and Bobby Kennedy - both of whom she is believed to have had affairs with. "He didn't think they were good people for her to be around," Positano claimed.

Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her Los Angeles home on August 4, 1962, at the age of 36. Her cause of death was determined to be an overdose of barbiturates.

As PBS reports , DiMaggio directed his ex-wife's funeral, inviting only a small number of her family and friends to attend the service - barring the public and most of Hollywood.

When questioned by studio executives as to why 'their people' shouldn't be present for the funeral, DiMaggio reportedly replied: "Tell them if it wasn't for them, she'd still be here."

During the funeral at Los Angeles' Westwood Memorial Park, DiMaggio was reported to have bent over the coffin, kissed it and said, "I love you. I love you."

According to one biographer, Monroe had made DiMaggio promise to place flowers on her grave every week if she were to die before him.

The final words

Joe DiMaggio died of lung cancer on March 7, 1999.

More than three decades after Monroe's death, it seems she was on his mind in his final minutes.

According to DiMaggio's lawyer and confidant Morris Engelberg, who was at his bedside when he died, the icon's final whispered words were: "I'll finally get to see Marilyn."

"As far as Engelberg could tell, she was the one person in life that DiMaggio had truly loved," reports.

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Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio's story didn't end with their divorce

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Written on a dry-cleaning ticket, the note is signed "your wife (for life)"; in the end, the couple's marriage only lasted nine months. "Dear Joe, I know I was wrong!

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Inside the baseball world, the 1954 marriage between Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, which took place in San Francisco 62 years ago today, was a curious but understandable pairing of New York Yankees hero and Hollywood starlet.

DiMaggio had already been married to one film actress, Dorothy Arnold, from 1939-44. So to the hardball fanatic, this was simply a case of two more charismatic famous people having found each other and giving wedded bliss a try.

But then there was the bigger world outside the sport. There, this would grow into legend: a marquee match of American icons, a historic partnership that represented some sort of romantic perfection. On the dark side was the much-publicized jealous and unacceptable rage DiMaggio had exhibited in the relationship.

"Baseball fans, as always, are focused on the infield fly rule," said longtime Newark Star-Ledger sports columnist Jerry Izenberg, who covered DiMaggio during his playing days and after. "To them, this was no big deal, just Joe marrying another movie star."

Ultimately, the story of this ill-fated union was about how real life is far different from any ideal Shangri-La. But while the DiMaggio-Monroe marriage might have fizzled out after nine months, the passion between the two never quite disappeared, which makes the story of their love intriguing even now.

DiMaggio sought out Monroe in 1952, asking a friend who knew the burgeoning movie star to see if she would accompany him to dinner. This innocent meeting quickly became a press sideshow, so DiMaggio and Monroe took their relationship into the private realm.

That's why it shook the world of celebrity a bit when the two showed up at City Hall in San Francisco on Jan. 14, 1954, to tie the knot. Of course, that didn't prevent them from being mobbed by the media there.

"Joltin' Joe DiMaggio wedded the girl of his and many other men's dreams yesterday afternoon in the San Francisco City Hall," read the newspaper story the next day in the San Francisco Chronicle, written by Art Hoppe.

"Marilyn Monroe, who packs no mean jolt herself, said she was very happy. DiMaggio said he was also very happy. Also happy was the battery of columnists which has spent no little time in the past two years running down rumors that the two were already secretly married, were to be married, or were not speaking to each other."

The report said that the location and time of the ceremony had been kept secret and "only about 500 people managed to hear about it in time to turn the corridors outside Municipal Judge Charles S. Perry's court into a madhouse."

The reason?

"Marilyn, it seems, had made the mistake of calling her studio in Hollywood [the day before the wedding] and letting it in on her plans to be married at 1 p.m. A studio official casually mentioned it as fast as he could to all the major news services."

With that cat out of the bag, the soon-to-be Mr. and Mrs. were forced to host an impromptu press conference led by the hard-hitting question, "Are you excited, Marilyn?"

Monroe, the Chronicle wrote, giggled and said, "Oh, you KNOW it's more than that."

After an incorrect guarantee by DiMaggio that the couple would have "at least one" child, the pair put on a display of public affection for the assembled media.

"By the time they finished kissing each other exhaustively for the photographers' benefit, Marilyn's blonde hair was in disarray, and most of her lipstick had been transferred to the ballplayer's face," Hoppe wrote.

The two were officially married at 1:48 p.m. and had to dodge crowds through the corridors of the building and down to the basement. The spectacle of it soon began to bristle DiMaggio.

The Chronicle summed up the confrontation like this: "'This is a fine thing -- dodging your loyal fans like this, Joe,' said a member of the crowd who had wormed his way into the elevator. DiMaggio took umbrage and shouted: 'Don't tell me what to do!'"

Soon enough, the wedding day -- and the marriage -- were over. The relationship between DiMaggio and Monroe had always been a turbulent one that began to reveal fissures early on.

Izenberg had served in the Korean War, and he was in Japan when DiMaggio and Monroe arrived in Tokyo for their honeymoon.

"There was an incredible mob at the airport in Tokyo, and they all wanted to see Marilyn Monroe," Izenberg said. "There was a lot of pushing and shoving, and before their little press conference even started, Marilyn turned to Joe and said, 'Do you hear that? All those people calling my name?'

"And he had already had enough of it. His attitude was along the lines of, 'This might be new to you, kid, but this is not new to me.' You could already tell there were going to be problems."

The marriage lasted a total of 274 days and ended with a divorce in October 1954. Monroe would later marry and divorce playwright Arthur Miller, and she died of a drug overdose in 1962 at the age of 36.

And while their marriage might have flamed out, the embers of DiMaggio's love for Monroe continued to burn.

The two reportedly remained confidants, and DiMaggio famously sent roses to her Los Angeles grave several times a week for more than 20 years until his death in 1999.

Her memory stayed with him until the end, too, according to his lawyer, Morris Engelberg, who was by DiMaggio's bedside when he passed away at the age of 84.

Engelberg told Vanity Fair that DiMaggio's last words were: "I'll finally get to see Marilyn."

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#TBT to the day Marilyn married Joltin' Joe

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Inside the baseball world, the 1954 marriage between Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe, which took place in San Francisco 62 years ago today, was a curious but understandable pairing of New York Yankees hero and Hollywood starlet.DiMaggio had already been married to one film actress, Dorothy Arnold, from 1939-44. So