In 2005, The New York Times featured Donald and Melania Trump’s then-impending nuptials in a story about how when it comes to product placement, weddings are the new movies. It’s an idea that seems almost quaint on this side of the Instagram filter, but it opened with a discussion of a discounted 15-carat Graff wedding ring, which Trump had claimed he got half-off in exchange for publicity. “Only a fool would say, ‘No thank you, I want to pay a million dollars more for a diamond,’” Trump told the paper.

On Thursday, however, 13 years into the Trump marriage, Graff Diamonds has denied that this deal was ever struck. Laurence Graff, the jeweler’s chairman, told Forbes that Trump’s claim was not true. Graff said the company did Trump “no [favors],” though the current president was “a pleasure to do business with.” Company’s C.F.O. Nicholas Paine reiterated, “We don’t sell items for publicity value.” A third source with knowledge of the transaction told Forbes, “He paid for [the ring] in full, and he paid immediately.” The great dealmaker has struck again.

Graff did place its product on The Apprentice in November 2004. A winning team of second season contestants received $50,000 to spend at the New York location as a reward at the end of an episode (the top end of sponsorship for the show could cost up to $25 million so knocking a bit off the retail price of a diamond actually sounds like a steal).

Neither Graff nor Forbes specifies why the jeweler is commenting on the purchase 15 years later. In 2004, when the news of the exchange originally grabbed headlines, Graff declined to comment, and as recently as a month ago, a company rep told Town & Country that “it is not our practice to comment on client relationships.” (After the Forbes report, Town & Country repackaged the story around the new information, and removed the “no comment” from Graff. The quote still appears in a cached version of the article.) Though the company now denies a special deal, they still won’t specify how much Trump paid for the diamond in the end.

The story did change a couple times over the years. In 2004, while Trump was chastising his son Don Jr., who had accepted an offer for a free diamond ring in exchange for a public proposal at a mall in New Jersey, on Larry King, Trump admitted he “negotiated” a “great price” for Melania’s ring. “Hey, I bought a ring,” he said. “I got it from Graff. You negotiated hard. I said you’re going to get a lot of publicity and I want a great price blah, blah, blah. But I don’t do a big stunt over it.” (Why he decided to knock his kid on national television for largely doing what he did on a daily basis is another Trumpian mystery, but the Juniors got theirs later. See this profile in the Times where Don’s wife, Vanessa Trump, said she assumed Donald Trump was special needs the first time she met him in 2003).

Less than a month later, Trump sources gave way to headlines claiming that the “great price” was free in exchange for the publicity. But by 2005, Trump was back to saying that he paid for it, telling the Times that he got half off the $1.5 million price tag. The weight of the ring kept changing, too. The Post lists it at 13 carats, and The New York Times at 15 carats. Forbes safely lists it at “more than 10 carats.”