The Heartbreaking Truth About Elvis and Priscilla Presley's Love Story - E! NEWS

Almost 45 years after his death, Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley remain embedded in our culture as a unit, from the footage of their 1967 wedding, the bouffant-sporting bride's kohl-rimmed eyes gazing at her heartthrob husband, to their family photos with daughter Lisa Marie.

Priscilla Beaulieu was 14 when she first met Elvis Presley at a party in West Germany in September 1959.

What are you, about a junior or senior in high school?" When she told him she was in ninth grade, he chuckled and said, "Why, you're just a baby.".

"I saw Elvis trying to get my attention," Priscilla remembered.

I couldn't believe that Elvis Presley was trying to impress me.".

Her parents didn't like it at all, but when it became clear she wasn't going to stay away, Priscilla's stepfather insisted they at least meet the man, and when Elvis came for dinner, dressed to impress in full uniform, Paul leveled with him: What do you want.

She didn't take them, only finding out later it was Dexedrine—amphetamines, that is, which Elvis started using when he got to the Army.

in March 1960, Priscilla was informed by paparazzi that Elvis had started dating Nancy Sinatra (the first of many stars he'd be linked to) before she got a call from him.

They hadn't talked in months or seen each other in two years, Priscilla recalled, when in February 1962 he invited her to fly out to Los Angeles.

Priscilla spent Christmas of 1962 at Graceland, and when she went back to Germany, she told her mother that Elvis wanted her to move to Memphis to finish high school. .

Priscilla could live with his father and stepmother, Elvis told Paul.

"Declaring his intentions honorable, he swore that he loved and needed and respected me," Priscilla told People. "In fact, he couldn't live without me, he said, intimating that one day we'd marry.

Priscilla did move in with Vernon and Dee Presley, technically, while she attended the all-girl Immaculate Conception Cathedral High School in Memphis, but spent so much time at Graceland with Elvis, she was eventually just living there.

"People have said, 'Oh my gosh, I can't believe your parents let you go with this stranger,'" Priscilla said on Good Morning America in 2017. "But it was a very innocent time.

Life at Graceland "was lonely" for her in those first years, Priscilla admitted to Closer Weekly in 2017. Elvis' very involved manager, Col.

Tom Parker, didn't want it known that his valuable client had a steady girlfriend, for fear they'd give up their own hopes of being with Elvis and stop buying records, and there weren't even any pictures of the pair around the house.

"It was a life-style so outrageous," Priscilla told People in 1978, "that I'm just thankful I've come out sane.".

Ultimately Elvis never veered from the course he decided on with Priscilla, getting down on one knee in her bedroom at Graceland shortly before Christmas in 1966 and proposing with a 3 1/2-carat diamond surrounded by 20 more diamonds, the ring by Memphis jeweler Harry Levitch. .

Nine months to the day after they became husband and wife, their daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, was born in Memphis.

Elvis was a doting, loving father, Priscilla told Closer, but he didn't change diapers—"That wasn't a man's job"—and had a hard time watching the baby eat, due to the inevitable drool.

His prescription drug use also became more of a problem, and Priscilla said on Good Morning America recently that seeing a scene in the new Baz Luhrmann-directed biopic Elvis in which her younger self (played by Olivia DeJonge) tells her husband (an "unbelievable" Austin Butler) to seek help for his "dependency" touched a nerve.

"It was getting more and more frightening as time went by," Priscilla recalled, "where he just was like, rebelling."

"If he saw somebody he didn't like on the TV, he'd get his gun out and blow it up," Priscilla said

Priscilla brought Lisa Marie to one of Elvis' Las Vegas shows later that year, and as part of a long off-the-cuff monologue that had become part of his act of late, the entertainer paid tribute to his ex ("She's a beautiful chick, I'll tell you for sure, boy") and told the audience they remained "the best of friends." 

We would say ‘Mommy said this' and 'Daddy said that.' That helped Lisa to feel stable

Sadly, Elvis didn't get much older

"The first thing I thought about was [Lisa Marie], because my daughter was visiting and was supposed to come home that day because school started, so I was trying to rush home," Priscilla said

The only person alive who truly knows what happened between her and Elvis behind closed doors, Priscilla also attended the film's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival and earlier this month Lisa Marie and granddaughter Riley Keough joined her for the U.S

But admittedly, Priscilla said, "I'm sitting there watching this movie and going, 'God I wish he could see this.'"