In this paper, we study underlay device-to-device (D2D) communication systems empowered by a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) for cognitive cellular networks. Considering Rayleigh fading channels and the general case where there exist both the direct and RIS-enabled D2D channels, the outage probability (OP) of the D2D communication link is presented in closed-form. Next, for the considered RIS-empowered underlaid D2D system, we frame an OP minimization problem. We target the joint optimization of the transmit power at the D2D source and the RIS placement, under constraints on the transmit power at the D2D source and on the limited interference imposed on the cellular user for two RIS deployment topologies. Due to the coupled optimization variables, the formulated optimization problem is extremely intractable. We propose an equivalent transformation which we are able to solve analytically. In the transformed problem, an expression for the average value of the signal-to-interference-noise ratio (SINR) at the D2D receiver is derived in closed-form. Our theoretical derivations are corroborated through simulation results, and various system design insights are deduced. It is indicatively showcased that the proposed RIS-empowered underlaid D2D system design outperforms the benchmark semi-adaptive optimal power and optimal distance schemes, offering $44\%$ and $20\%$ performance improvement, respectively.