Priscilla Presley met and fell in love with Elvis Presley when she was just fourteen years old, at twenty-four years his senior. Despite the decade gap between them, Elvis wanted no one but Priscilla and quickly made it clear that he wanted to marry her, despite her youth – and they eventually married when Priscilla was twenty-one.
However, not everything was peachy in their relationship during the early years. Priscilla, now 76, recently visited Melbourne’s Bendigo Art Gallery and opened up about her time being married to Elvis and how it was harder than she imagined it would be from the outside looking in.
“I found out how vicious people could be… there were rumors I was pregnant, and that’s why he got married, and I’m going, ‘Oh my God, this is not gonna be good for me,’” she said.
Priscilla was in a relationship with Elvis for eight years before reaching the age of twenty-one, and they married in Las Vegas in 1967. While he was serving in the United States Army stationed in Germany, she first met Elvis, the music superstar.
She was never going to be ready to marry the rock star, even if she had been with him for eight years before their marriage.
“The beginning [of the marriage] was very difficult, but I knew what I was in for because I saw it at a very young age,” she stated. “That’s when I started not reading papers anymore or [magazines] in the grocery stores. It was hard to get accepted. But he always told me, ‘Don’t pay attention… don’t even listen and don’t look at the tabloids.’”
Priscilla felt under a lot of stress following her marriage to Elvis, since she was not as used to the limelight as her heartthrob husband.
“You know what the truth is, so just be cautious, but be aware.”
Priscilla was still in school throughout their relationship, which made it difficult for her to connect with the King since he liked partying late into the night and going out for late-night movie showings near his home in Graceland.
“We would head out for the theatre, sometimes coming home at three, four, or five o’clock in the morning,” she stated. “At that time, I was going to school, by the way, so I would go to bed and then get up at 7.30… I didn’t do well with the grades.”
However, Priscilla added that Elvis had a reserved side and would stay up reading late at night as well.
“We could come home at two o’clock in the morning or later, and he would go right to the books and start reading,” she added. “And he would read [out loud to me], and I would be so tired… and he would say, ‘You aren’t listening to me,’ and I would say [to myself], ‘Okay, keep your eyes open.’”