Priscilla Presley Reveals Why She Never Remarried After Elvis
“No one could ever match” Elvis, she told a crowd.
Priscilla Presley revealed why she never remarried after Elvis, in an interview Friday in Las Vegas. During a Q&A event at the South Point Casino in Las Vegas on Friday, the actress, 78— whose courtship with the rock icon is currently dramatized on-screen in the new movie Priscilla—also discussed why they only had one child. (Married from 1967 to 1973, they divorced in 1973.) Recently, she has also recalled the moment she found out Elvis was gone. Read on to see what she said.
Elvis Presley died at the very young age of 42, due to heart failure, on August 16, 1977, at Graceland in Memphis. By then, he and Priscilla had been divorced for four years. When asked why she never remarried after he died, Priscilla said, "I just don't think that he could handle that," adding: "To be honest with you, I never wanted to marry after him. I never had any desire," she said, according to People. "No one could ever match him."
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Elvis and Priscilla had one only child, Lisa Marie Presley. "Elvis felt he had a very busy schedule and he did have a bit of guilt that he wasn't around that much when Lisa was younger," she said to the crowd, adding: "With his scheduling and his touring, he just felt he wasn't around enough to give a lot of attention to having another child." Lisa Marie died after a cardiac arrest she had on January 12, 2023, at the age of 54.
On Thursday, Presley recounted, to Piers Morgan on TalkTV, her feelings finding out Elvis was dead; she'd heard it from his road manager. "I can still hear Joe Esposito's words, 'Cilla, Elvis is dead', and that was like, I just couldn't imagine him ever, especially at his age and all, still so young and wanting to do so much and had so much planned, and not having him, not talking to him, not having him be the father of our child," she told Morgan. She added: "My big fear was Lisa, and how do I tell her. She was only 9 at the time."
Presley also discussed her daughter's death with Morgan. "It's like a large part of your life is taken away," she said. Lisa Marie died just days after attending the Golden Globes with her mom and Austin Butler, who played her father in the hit Elvis biopic. "She didn't look well that night, and I was concerned," Priscilla told Morgan. "She asked Jerry Schilling, one of my best friends, if he could hold her. Her heels were high, and she's worn them before, and I thought, 'Is she OK?' She didn't really look that OK, she looked very frail."
"So, I let that go," she continued. "Then we watched the show, and we had a few laughs, and we were all excited about Austin Butler and Baz, and the movie went so well, we were proud of them. Then we started to go, and she said 'Mom, do you want to go to Chateau Marmont and have a drink?' I said sure. I had gotten in my own car, and she had her own car since she lived in Calabasas."
"We both had our high heels on and both of us tripped on the staircase, and we started laughing and giggling. We went … and sat down, and she said, 'Mom, I have to go, my stomach really hurts.' I go, 'of course, are you OK?' She goes, 'Yes, yes, I just really have to go.' And I go, 'OK, we will get the cars now.' Then I hugged her, and she went her way, and I went mine — and that hug was the last hug I gave her. And it's still shocking that we don't have her."
"It was unbearable. I lost my mother, I lost my grandson, and [then] I lost my daughter," she added.
