Elvis Presley‘s romantic history with Priscilla Presley began in the late 1950s and continued through the early 1970s. However, he appeared to rewrite history in a classic Graceland interview shortly after his Army release. Elvis seemed to recall his relationship with Priscilla in Germany to be shorter in time than it really was. Here are the details.
Elvis Presley discussed his relationship with Prisiclla in the first interview after his Army discharge
In 1960, Elvis Presley walked from the back of Graceland down a small path to a freestanding structure in the home’s backyard. That was his father, Vernon Presley’s office, where he gave his first full-length interview after his discharge from the US Army.
There, Elvis discussed leaving the Army behind, his plans for the future, and his romantic relationships. It was then he referenced Priscilla without mentioning her by name.
Elvis sat in Vernon’s chair and laughed as he was asked by a reporter, “Elvis, there are rumors about your love life. Did you meet anyone special in Germany?”
“Not any special one. But there was a little girl I was seeing there quite often,” he began.
“Her father was in the Air Force. Actually, they only got there about two months before I left,” Elvis continued.
“I was seeing her, and she was at the airport when I left. But it was no big romance,” he concluded.
How long did Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley date while he was in Germany?
Although Elvis Presley revealed that he had only met Priscilla two months before he left Germany for good, other timelines reveal different details. Women’s Health places the timeframe of their first meeting as September 1959.
Priscilla clarified being approached by Currie Grant during a “warm summer afternoon” in 1959 in an excerpt from her book Elvis and Me, published by People Magazine. Grant was friends with Elvis Presley, stationed in West Germany, where Priscilla lived with her family.
“I noticed a handsome man in his 20s staring at me. I’d seen him watching me before, but I’d never paid any attention to him. This time, he stood up and walked toward me. He introduced himself as Currie Grant,” she wrote.
“He asked where in the States I came from, how I liked Germany, and if I liked Elvis Presley,” she continued. “Currie assured Dad that I’d be well chaperoned when we visited Elvis, who lived off base in a house in Bad Nauheim.”
“Currie led me over to him; Elvis stood up and smiled. “Well,” he said, “what have we here? What are you, about a junior or senior in high school?” When Priscilla revealed she was in ninth grade, Elvis called her a “baby.”
Soon, Priscilla spent all her time at Elvis’ home and his bedroom. However, she insisted he never took advantage of her.
Following Elvis’ discharge in March 1960, Priscilla said, “I locked myself in my room, unable to eat, unable to sleep. Finally, I forced myself to go to school and found myself swamped by reporters and photographers.”
‘The girl he left behind’
Elvis Presley likely didn’t want to reveal just how long he had been seeing Priscilla to reporters at that telling press conference. Also, he probably didn’t want to respond to personal inquiries about her name and age, as he was 24 and she was just 14.
“The stories came out, ‘the girl he left behind,'” he laughed to reporters at the press conference. “It wasn’t like that.”
He concluded, “I have to be careful when I answer a question like that.” Then, the conversation turned to food and other topics before the press conference ended.
It wasn’t until February 1962, two years after Elvis left Germany, that he called Priscilla and asked if she would like to visit him in LA. By March 1963, Priscilla had moved full-time to Memphis.
First, she lived with Elvis’s father, Vernon Presley, and his wife, Dee Stanley. Eventually, she moved into Elvis’s home full-time.
The couple married in September 1967 and welcomed their first child, Lisa Marie Presley, in May 1968. They divorced in 1973.
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