Priscilla Presley: The Queen Of Rock and Roll
When Priscilla Presley first laid eyes on Elvis, she was just 14 years old—but that didn’t matter to the King of Rock and Roll. Smitten at first sight with her innocent beauty, Elvis swept up the girl into a dark, glittering world of satin sheets, all-night carousing, and endless pills. When they finally married, their secrets just got deeper.
1. Her Father Died When She Was A Baby
Priscilla’s life began with a lie. Less than six months after she was born in 1945, her father—US Navy pilot James Frederick Wagner—perished in a plane crash, leaving her mother Ann to care for her newborn infant on her own. Even so, Ann wasn’t alone for long, and when she remarried US Air Force officer Paul Beaulieu in 1948, she made a fateful decision.
2. Her Mother Lied To Her
As Priscilla grew into a toddler, her mother taught her to believe that Paul Beaulieu was her father. Priscilla found out the truth in a heartbreaking way. After an “unhappy” Air Force brat childhood moving from city to city, she was looking through keepsakes at the family home one day, and it was there she discovered that Beaulieu was her adoptive father.
It wasn’t long after that she met her destiny.
3. Her Stepfather Introduced Her To Her Future Husband
Priscilla has described the first time she became aware of Elvis—when her father came home late one night and handed her an Elvis Presley record, saying, “I don’t know what this Elvis guy is all about, but he must be something special. I stood in line with half the armed forces at the PX to get this for you”.
Just three years later, she would meet the real thing.
Rossano aka Bud Care, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
4. She Was A Stunner
By her tweens and early teens, Priscilla was turning into a captivating girl who boys couldn’t help but stare at; some admirer even stole a picture of her in a tight sweater that had been pinned to the school bulletin board.
All the same, she was still naive, shy, and awkward. So when Paul Beaulieu got called to Germany in 1959, when Priscilla was 14 years old, she wasn’t prepared for the way her life was going to change.
5. She Attracted Attention
After getting settled as best she could in Germany, Priscilla went out one summer afternoon with her brother to the Eagles club, where many American service families went to dinner. While there, a man in his 20s began staring at her. This wasn’t an unusual occurrence for Priscilla at the time, but the man’s next action was.
6. She Got An Offer She Couldn’t Refuse
Eventually, the man walked up to Priscilla and introduced himself as Currie Grant. Then he made her a surprising offer. After asking if she knew who Elvis Presley was (she replied that of course she did), he informed Priscilla that Elvis, who was currently serving in the US military in Germany, was a good friend of his, and that he and his wife went to his house all the time.
“How would you like to join us one evening?” He asked.
7. She Went To Elvis’s House
After getting a reluctant go-ahead from her parents, Priscilla went with Grant to Elvis’s off-base house in Bad Nauheim. It was immediately like an alternate reality: Although the house was an ordinary three-storey structure with a white picket fence, a sign on the gate in German read: “Autographs between 7:00 and 8:00 pm only”.
But when she walked in, the effect the 14-year-old had on the 24-year-old Elvis was earth-shattering.
8. She Intimidated The King
Priscilla described Elvis that night, sitting in the middle of his “plain, almost drab living room” as “handsomer than he appeared in films, younger and more vulnerable looking with his GI haircut”. Yet while she was certainly intimidated, accounts of that night describe how her presence seemed to make Elvis “awkward” and “embarrassed”. Their first interaction didn’t help.
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9. He Thought She Was A Baby
According to Priscilla, upon spotting the young girl, one of the first questions Elvis asked was “What are you, about a junior or senior in high school?” Priscilla blushed, reluctant to admit her age, before telling him she was actually only in the ninth grade. Elvis then laughed and told her, “Why, you’re just a baby”—but he certainly didn’t act like he believed that.
George R. Fry, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
10. He Tried To Impress Her
Throughout the night, even the naive Priscilla started to notice that Elvis was trying to impress her, and when he went over to the piano and began singing songs like “Rags to Riches” and “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” he seemed to be performing for her and her alone.
Even so, when she left that night—so late that her parents were furious—she assumed she’d never see him again. The exact opposite was true.
11. She Got Mixed Messages
Before long, Priscilla was spending most of her time with Elvis, who managed to convince her parents that his intentions were pure. Behind closed doors, the story was different. Although Elvis told her he would “treat you just like a sister” during their first moments alone together, they also cuddled in bed and he kissed her goodbye—her first kiss—in the same interaction.
What Elvis really wanted out of Priscilla was as complex as it was disturbing.
Dell Publishing, 1960. Photographer: Bob East of Gilloon [1], Wikimedia Commons
12. He Liked Her Innocence
In truth, Elvis’s view of Priscilla was both romantic and innocent. According to Priscilla, Elvis’s Southern background “had taught him that the ‘right’ girl was to be saved for marriage,” and after he laid eyes on the green 14-year-old, he believed she was that girl and began courting her for her “purity”.
But there were other, equally unsettling reasons for his interest.
13. He Was Controlling
In addition to being drawn to—and aroused by—Priscilla’s innocence, Elvis was also attracted to the idea of building a woman from the ground up, and of molding Priscilla into the exact girlfriend and woman he wanted her to be. Even in these early days, then, Priscilla was in Elvis’s orbit, not the other way around…and this became painfully obvious.
George R. Fry, Los Angeles Times, Wikimedia Commons
14. She Obeyed His Every Whim
In Germany, Prisciila was completely in Elvis’s thrall. He would call her when he was ready, and she would then scramble around looking for clothes that would make her look older (often her mother’s) before Elvis’s father Vernon picked her up and drove her to Bad Nauheim. Even then, Elvis would frequently be entertaining scores of people, and she’d spend all night waiting for him to look at her and give the signal to go upstairs to his bedroom so they could spend time alone together.
Even so, in some ways Elvis was also becoming dependent on her.
15. He Used Her As Therapy
Germany was a particularly fallow time in Elvis’s career, and he worried that fans would no longer remember him when he got back to entertaining. More than that, his beloved mother Gladys had passed just a year before he and Priscilla met, and Elvis was still smarting from the loss. During their tete-a-tetes, after the cuddling and the kissing, Elvis would often speak to the teenager of his worries.
“It was a lot to expect someone my age to understand,” Priscilla noted, “but I tried”. Soon, she would be trying a lot harder.
16. Her Grades Suffered
As the weeks went on, the romance took a toll on Priscilla. Spending most of her time with Elvis, she hardly slept and was soon failing many of her classes. At the same time, her parents were still suspicious of the idol’s interest in their daughter, and Priscilla knew if she complained to them, they would cut things off.
When Elvis saw how tense and tired she was, his “solution” was ghastly.
17. He Gave Her Pills
One night, Elvis had called Priscilla over to see him, but—typically—had to finish up a karate class before he actually saw her. When he was finally done and saw how shattered she was, he led her to his room and gave her a handful of white pills, telling her, “they’ll help you stay awake during the day”. Priscilla had now wandered into the dark side of Elvis.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
18. He Had A Problem
While in the military, Elvis had been introduced to amphetamines to go on certain maneuvers, and became “practically evangelical about their benefits”. Likely thinking he was merely helping her, he told Priscilla that night, “If I didn’t have them, I’d never make it through the day myself”. This time, Priscilla refused, but it was only a matter of time.
19. He Took Pills Morning And Night
Later, Prisiclla found out that the pills were specifically Dexedrine, and that besides taking uppers Elvis was also on a regime of sleeping pills, which he’d begun taking even before he’d been drafted to help stave off insomnia. His life was a cycle of frenetic energy and then a controlled crash.
Their fairy tale was also about to crash.
Unknown Author, Wikimedia Commons
20. He Left Her
In March of 1960, Elvis left his posting in Germany and returned to the US. Their parting nearly destroyed her. Although Priscilla claims Elvis wouldn’t consummate their relationship, saying she was too young, they nonetheless had a “passionate” night together before he left, and for two days after his departure Priscilla didn’t leave her room, didn’t eat, and couldn’t sleep.
When she dragged herself out to the real world, she got a nasty surprise.
21. He Moved On
When Priscilla went back to school in the midst of her grief, reporters met her and informed her that—not hours after he left her—Elvis was seen with Nancy Sinatra at the airport when he landed, and seemed to be engaged in a romance with the woman, not to mention with his previous girlfriend Anita Wood.
Crushed, Prisicilla resigned herself to the fact that for Elvis, she’d only been a fling. Then, at three in the morning, she got a phone call.
22. He Called Her At All Hours
21 days after leaving her, Elvis called Priscilla on the phone in the early hours, asking, “How’s my little girl?” It was the beginning of the next painful phase of their relationship: Priscilla would wait by the phone for the musician’s calls, which only came sporadically every three weeks or even three months. Meanwhile, she kept reading about Elvis’s latest romances with co-stars and other actresses, including Tuesday Weld and Juliet Prowse.
But Elvis could delight her as much as he could break her heart.
23. He Wanted Her With Him
In February 1962, years after he had left Germany, Elvis made a stunning proposition. He wanted Priscilla to visit him in Los Angeles. After much finagling with her parents, who insisted Elvis pay for a first-class ticket, have Priscilla chaperoned at all times, and have her send them daily letters, Priscilla landed in LA that summer.
Yet Priscilla had barely touched down before she realized something was wrong.
24. She Had A Lonely Arrival
Elvis didn’t meet Priscilla at the airport, having a friend pick her up instead, and when she got to his mansion on Bellagio Road the butler had to inform her that “Mr P is in the den”. At that point, after hearing music and laughing, Priscilla realized that a party was going on, and walked in on Elvis happily playing pool with a bunch of friends, as if her arrival was barely noticeable.
Elvis greeted her enthusiastically, but the pit in Priscilla’s stomach grew.
25. He Changed For The Worse
As the night went on, Priscilla noticed that Elvis had changed—and not for the better. As she said, “He’d left Germany a gentle, sensitive and insecure boy; through the course of the evening I’d see that he now was mischievous and self-confident to the point of cockiness”. It got worse. At one point, a girl told Elvis to watch out for a glass before it fell, and Elvis sneered at her.
But Priscilla was in deep, and she was only going to go deeper.
26. He Shipped Her Off
Priscilla was firmly in Elvis’s world now, and he made sure she knew it. That night, he happily confirmed she was still a virgin and continued to refuse her advances, saying “I’m not going to spoil you”. He then informed her she wouldn’t be staying with him that night—because, Priscilla later found out, he had only just sent his ex-girlfriend Anita Wood packing and didn’t want Priscilla around for any late-night phone calls.
It wasn’t his only orchestration of the trip.
27. He Helped Her Lie To Her Parents
The next day, Elvis invited Priscilla along to Las Vegas for a streak of partying, and he had just the idea to placate her worried parents back in Germany. Since Priscilla was expected to write daily to them and he didn’t want to wait for permission for Vegas, he had her pre-write letters that his Los Angeles staff would then mail day by day.
Vegas would be a threshold moment for Priscilla.
28. He Was Fraying At The Edges
When they arrived at the Sahara Hotel in Vegas, Elvis told Priscilla how much he was looking forward to their time together. But once more, something was off. Priscilla noted how much Elvis was stumbling over his words and how delayed his reaction times were, and then noticed the ever-present pills near his bed. As she put it, “I realized I still had competition”.
29. He Changed Her Look
Over the course of the next few days, Elvis completed the moulding of his “living doll” Priscilla. He bought her suitcases of clothing, all to his taste, and also hired someone at the hotel to completely redo her hair and makeup since, as Elvis told her, she was “too plain naturally. I like a lot of makeup”.
It was far from the only way she bent to Elvis’s will.
30. She Tried To Keep Up
Priscilla’s trip to Vegas came with dusk-to-dawn partying, and it wasn’t long before she gave in and began taking the pills that Elvis had on offer; as she later wrote, “In order for me to keep up, they became essential”. Despite these adult activities, however, Elvis still insisted she remain a virgin. The day before she left for Germany, he whispered to her in bed, “I want you back the way you are now. And remember, I’ll always know”.
But by now his hold on her was too strong, and she wasn’t back in Europe for long.
31. She Moved To Memphis
Priscilla spent that Christmas at Graceland, and by March of 1963, the now 18-year-old had convinced her parents to let her move to Memphis full time and finish up school there. Once more, there were stipulations: Priscilla was to live not in Graceland, but nearby with Elvis’s father, and there was a tacit understanding that Elvis and Priscilla would soon marry.
Once more, that’s not quite what happened.
32. He Went Behind Her Back
Before long, Priscilla had moved all her things into Graceland anyway, and with no proposal from Elvis. In fact, Elvis was often away in Hollywood, filming with beautiful actresses—and whenever Priscilla begged to see him, usually after the latest rumor that he was sleeping with his co-star, he would put her off.
As it turned out, Elvis was often having affairs, though he denied them, all while Priscilla waited for him in Memphis. But people were beginning to notice.
33. They Were Living In Sin
Many of Elvis’s fans were scandalized that he and Priscilla were living together in Graceland without marrying, but Priscilla was in Memphis for almost three long years—all without the proposal her parents expected—before Elvis’s manager Colonel Tom Parker reminded him of the morality clause in his record contract and heavily pushed him to seal the deal with his live-in girlfriend.
So, shortly before Christmas of 1966, Elvis finally proposed. Somehow, it got less romantic.
34. Their Wedding Was A Mess
Various friends of Elvis have asserted that, although he had feelings for Priscilla, he felt upset and cornered by the idea that he had to marry her. Maybe that’s why the wedding was a total disaster. Colonel Parker organized the rushed, eight-minute ceremony at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas and invited almost none of the couple’s friends, though loved ones did attend the $10,000 breakfast reception/PR stunt that followed.
It was an inauspicious beginning, and the ceremony snub caused rifts for years with Elvis and his friends. Plus, the bad luck continued.
35. She Had A Controversial Wedding Night
According to Priscilla herself, she and Elvis never consummated their union until their wedding night, just as Elvis always intended. However, biographers like Suzanne Finstand question the truth of this, and believe that the pair did do more than Priscilla said, even in Germany, and that Priscilla may have slept with other boyfriends as well.
Nonetheless, just weeks after her wedding night, Priscilla got life-changing news.
Elvis & Priscilla Presley's Wedding Day in Las Vegas (1967) | British Pathe by British Pathe
36. She Was Pregnant—And Unhappy
Not long after Elvis and Priscilla became man and wife, Priscilla found out she was pregnant. For her, it was actually devastating news: She felt she and Elvis had only just become truly close, and she worried what introducing a child into their marriage would do. She had even already asked Elvis about birth control, but he dissuaded her from taking any, telling her they weren’t “perfected” yet.
There were other, darker reasons why a baby wasn’t the joyous news it might have been.
37. He Didn’t Want Her
It’s no wonder Priscilla was crestfallen to find out she was pregnant. After all, Elvis had already told Priscilla that “he had never been able to make love to a woman who had a child”. More than that, amidst the rumors of his affairs, she had been insecure about their bedroom life for years. Yet although they both considered a medical procedure to end the pregnancy, neither of them could go through with it.
When the baby came, the timing was impeccable.
38. She Had A Little Girl
On February 1, 1968, Elvis and Priscilla’s only child, Lisa Marie Presley, was born. More than that, she came into the world exactly nine months after their wedding. Both Priscilla and Elvis doted on the little girl and gave her everything she could want—yet rather than Lisa Marie bringing them together, their baby seemed to be the beginning of the end.
39. She Strayed From Her Marriage
In her memoir, Priscilla made a guilty confession. Around the time that Lisa Marie was born, when Elvis was away filming Live a Little, Love a Little, she engaged in a brief affair with her private dance instructor. Nonetheless, Priscilla came out of the fling with a renewed commitment to working things out with Elvis, though she knew she “needed much more out of my relationship”.
Unfortunately, she wouldn’t get it.
40. He Made A Comeback
Lisa Marie’s birth also coincided with a resurgence in Elvis’s flagging popularity, particularly after he did his famous 1968 television comeback special wearing an all leather get-up. Suddenly, he was constantly touring again, particularly in Las Vegas—and with his popularity came even more affairs on his end, all while Priscilla once more sat waiting in Graceland.
The marriage soon turned critical.
41. She Was Alone Again
By 1971, Elvis and Priscilla were practically just roommates—and even then, Elvis was barely home. His affair with Joyce Bova was so serious that he often talked about her moving into Graceland, and (unbeknownst to him) Bova also became pregnant with his child and terminated it. Yet it was Priscilla, at least for Elvis, who ended it for good.
42. She Started An Affair
In 1972, fed up with her life, Priscilla began an affair with her karate instructor Mike Stone, whom she’d actually met backstage at one of Elvis’s shows. This time, it was more than just a brief fling, and Priscilla realized just how much she was missing in her marriage, recalling how she knew “I would have to make a crucial decision regarding my destiny”.
But when Elvis sensed her “new restlessness,” his response was disturbing.
43. Elvis Terrified Her
A few months after Priscilla’s affair with Mike Stone started, her memoir relates how Elvis asked to see his wife in his hotel room—and then was “forcefully” intimate with her, saying “This is how a real man makes love to his woman”. Although Priscilla later called her account an “overstatement” and regretted her word choice, the incident nonetheless underlined for her how little Elvis had cared about her as a woman until it was too late. And it was too late.
ruthdaniel3444, Wikimedia Commons
44. Her Divorce Was Friendly
In late February of 1972, the Presleys called it quits and separated, filing for divorce that August; by then, Elvis’s new girlfriend Linda Thompson, a Memphis Beauty Queen, was already living at Graceland. Even so, on the outside the split was as amicable as possible, with Elvis and Priscilla leaving the courthouse hand-in-hand the day of their official divorce in 1973.
But inside Graceland was another matter.
45. She Had A Violent Ex
While Priscilla and Elvis remained friendly, Elvis was falling apart at the seams; one of his friends admitted the divorce was “a blow from which he never recovered". His thoughts became violent. At one point, he even considered getting a hit out on Mike Stone, who Priscilla was now living with, saying, “There’s too much pain in me”. It was a fast decline from there.
46. He Fell Apart Without Her
After the divorce, Elvis’s physical and mental health, which had been teetering thanks to his massive substance use, took a nose dive. He drifted in and out of relationships, overdosed twice, and his still-constant touring only worsened his using. He was now obviously impaired up on stage and, as one guitarist put it, “it was obvious there was something terribly wrong with his body”.
Until the day Priscilla got some of the worst news of her life.
47. She Lost Him For Good
In August of 1977, Priscilla Presley learned that her ex-husband and the father of her child was dead; Elvis had been discovered, unresponsive, on the bathroom floor of his Graceland mansion. Although there is some debate on what exactly killed him, with some pointing to a faulty heart, most consider his heavy pill routine a significant factor in his demise.
And though Priscilla had now lost Elvis, it wasn’t the last of her tragedies.
48. She Lived Her Dreams
For a time, life after Elvis was good for Priscilla. Although she and Mike Stone broke up in 1975, her later relationship with Marco Antonio Garcia lasted 22 years and produced a son, Navarone Garibaldi, in 1987. More than that, Priscilla finally did break into Hollywood, and had significant and lauded roles in the soap opera Dallas as well the Naked Gun series opposite Leslie Nielsen.
In recent years, however, the darkness has crept back in.
Universal History Archive, Getty Images
49. She Had A Creepy Boyfriend
Starting in 1978, Priscilla had a six-year, on/off relationship with model Michael Edwards. The reason for their breakup was shocking. Reportedly, they ended things when Edwards began developing feelings for the teenaged Lisa Marie Presley, who was living with the couple. Yet in reality, the truth is even grimmer than that.
50. She Turned A Blind Eye
In her own recent memoir, Lisa Marie accused Michael Edwards of much more than having feelings for her. According to Elvis’s daughter, Edwards spent much of his relationship with Priscilla harassing her, going into her room at night after he’d been drinking and touching her—starting when she was just 10 years old. To make matters worse, Lisa Marie claimed she told Priscilla about it, only to have Priscilla wave away his behavior and accuse Lisa Marie of flirting.
Yet there was further devastation to come.
51. She Lost Her Daughter—And Started A Lawsuit
On January 12, 2023, just after attending the Golden Globes with Priscilla, Lisa Marie suddenly perished from complications after bariatric surgery. The whole world was shocked and saddened, Priscilla most of all—but the tragedy also brought endless controversy.
With the Elvis estate in limbo, Priscilla sued her own granddaughter, Lisa Marie’s daughter Riley Keogh, for control of the family trust, settling out of court. And recently, more unsettling accusations have emerged.
52. Her Business Partner Made A Cruel Accusation
In August 2025, two of Priscilla’s former business partners filed a lawsuit claiming Priscilla hastened Lisa Marie’s passing. In the suit, Brigitte Kruse and Kevin Fialko accuse Priscilla of pulling the plug on her own daughter in order to secure the claims she was about to make to the Graceland estate.
Priscilla’s representation vehemently denies this, but it’s another way Elvis continues to cast a long shadow on his ex-wife.
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