The actress was married to the singer for six years, and then never again. The couple got married in 1967 and divorced in 1973. Elvis died four years later.
Priscilla Presley has explained why she never remarried after Elvis. Speaking during a Q&A at the South Point Casino in Las Vegas in light of Sofia Coppola’s film of the same name, Priscilla confirmed that she deliberately chose not to remarry, a decision she made while the rockstar was still alive.
According to People magazine, Priscilla, now 78 years old, stated, “It’s just that I don’t think he could handle it.” The couple got married in 1967 and divorced in 1973. Elvis died four years later.
“To be honest, I never wanted to get married again after him. I never had any desire for it,” she declared. Her most serious relationship was with screenwriter and director Marco Garibaldi, with whom she spent over twenty years. Together they had a son, Navarone Garibaldi, but they never married. “No one could ever match [Elvis],” Priscilla said.
Priscilla wrote her version of their love story for People in 1985. Their paths first crossed in 1959 in West Germany, where the US Army had stationed Elvis. Priscilla’s stepfather was in the Air Force. Elvis was 24 and Priscilla was 14. Her friend Currie Grant invited her to Elvis’ house. “Wow, you’re just a kid,” Elvis said after learning she was in ninth grade.
“Something in his Southern upbringing had taught him that the ‘right’ girl should be saved for marriage,” she wrote in People. “I was that girl. At the same time, he shaped me into his woman. I wore the clothes, hairstyle, and makeup he carefully chose for me.”
The relationship between Priscilla and Elvis is the focus of “Priscilla,” Sofia Coppola’s film released in theaters on Friday. The late Lisa Marie, the former couple’s only daughter, did not like the film’s script. In some emails sent to the director by Elvis’ daughter and obtained by Variety, Lisa Marie said of the script, “My father is portrayed as an unscrupulous and manipulative individual. As a daughter, I read it and see nothing of my father in this character. I read it and do not see my mother’s point of view on my father. I read it and see your outrageously vindictive and contemptuous perspective, and I don’t understand why.”
Through her agent, Sofia Coppola responded to Lisa Marie via Variety, saying, “I hope when you see the finished film, you’ll change your mind and understand that I’m being very careful to honor your mother while also presenting your father with sensitivity and complexity.” This exchange took place a few months before Lisa Marie’s sad passing at the age of 54 last January.
As for Priscilla, she believes Sofia Coppola’s interpretation is correct. “I think she did her research,” she said in an interview with Piers Morgan on TalkTV. “So, she and I have talked about it, and when you live with Elvis Presley, people think, ‘Oh, how wonderful, it’s fantastic, it’s Elvis Presley,’ but I lived with him through ups and downs in a very crucial period of his life.”
“His ups and downs, his struggles, his fears… so, when you live with someone so famous, and you’ve been through a lot together… that’s the part of privacy that’s hard to give up, that’s hard to talk about. I don’t want to reveal too much because I want some of it for myself, just for me.”
