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Elvis and Priscilla Presley will always be one of Hollywood's most iconic couples. Even after their divorce, fans have remained fascinated about their relationship—how they really met, their unconventional marriage, and the real reason they split. There's also some controversy about their "disturbing" age gap...Here's everything Priscilla has said about her relationship with the King of Rock and Roll, from their first meeting to how he would've reacted to the new biopic, Elvis starring Austin Butler.
How Old Was Priscilla When She Met Elvis Presley?
Priscilla first met Elvis during his army days. They met at a party at his rented home in Germany in 1959. She was 14, he was 24. The singer allegedly acted like an "awkward, embarrassed" young man around Priscilla.
After going home late that night, her parents told her not to see Elvis again. Still, he was determined to pursue her, so he promised never to bring her home late again. They'd hang out together until his departure from Germany in 1960. The media instantly became obsessed with the pair. At one point, Priscilla thought their romance was over after gossip magazines kept linking Elvis to Nancy Sinatra.
After Elvis' return to the U.S., the two kept in touch by phone. But they didn't see each other again until the summer of 1962. Priscilla's parents had allowed her to visit him for two weeks on the condition that the musician pay for a first-class round-trip flight, have her chaperoned at all times, and that she write home every day.
During that visit, Priscilla went to Las Vegas with Elvis where she took amphetamines and sleeping pills to keep up with his lifestyle. After a Christmas visit that year, Priscilla's parents finally allowed her to move to Memphis with Elvis in March 1963.
Elvis and her parents had an agreement—she'd go to an all-girls Catholic school, the Immaculate Conception High School in Memphis, Tennessee, and live with his father and stepmother in a house a few streets away from his Graceland mansion until she finished high school in June that year.
They also agreed that they'd eventually marry. In Priscilla's autobiography Elvis and Me, she revealed that she "spent entire nights with Grandma at Graceland and gradually moved her belongings there." Her parents let her live there if Elvis promised to wed her. "The move was natural... I was there all the time anyway," the actress recounted.
Why Did Priscilla & Elvis Presley Get Divorced?
Elvis proposed to Priscilla before Christmas of 1966 after she allegedly threatened to tell her story to the press if he refused to marry her. Her father also threatened to have the Jailhouse Rock hitmaker charged under the Mann Act for "taking a minor across state lines for sexual purposes."
His manager, Colonel Parker also pushed him to marry by reminding him of his RCA "morals clause" within his contract. "At that time it wasn't nice for people to [just] live together," Priscilla told Ladies' Home Journal in 1973. However, Elvis' cook, Alberta claimed that he was so unhappy about the wedding that she saw him crying about it one day.
When the cook asked why he didn't just cancel the wedding, he replied: "I don't have a choice." Many of his other close friends have said the same thing about his hesitations. The couple eventually had an intimate wedding at a hotel in Las Vegas on May 1, 1967.
It was said to have only lasted eight minutes. The small ceremony caused some rifts between Elvis and his friends who weren't invited. After the reception, the couple had their honeymoon in Palm Springs. Soon, Priscilla found out she was pregnant with their daughter, Lisa Marie. Unprepared for it, she initially discussed having an abortion with Elvis. They both decided they couldn't live with it.
After that, both of them had their own affairs. Priscilla had a short affair with her dance instructor in 1968, the year Lisa Marie was born.
"I came out of it realizing I needed much more out of my relationship with Elvis," she shared. She also had an affair with a Karate instructor she'd met backstage at one of Elvis' concerts. At the time, the singer had also been having affairs with his co-stars and leading ladies.
After discovering his then-wife's "restlessness," he asked to see her in his hotel suite. There, he "forcefully made love to me...[as he said] 'This is how a real man makes love to his woman,'" Priscilla later wrote in her book.
The two filed for legal separation in 1972. They left the courthouse together hand in hand on the day of their divorce in 1973.
What Does Priscilla Presley Feel About Austin Butler's 'Elvis'
Priscilla admitted that it was tough reliving some of her memories with Elvis while watching Baz Luhrmann's Elvis. However, she thought the movie was "perfection," noting that Austin Butler did a great job portraying her ex-husband.
"I'm sitting there watching this movie and going 'god I wish he [Elvis] could see this. It was perfection," she raved. "Austin was just unbelievable. As I was watching it, actually, I was going wow, this is a movie that he would have really loved."
