Priscilla Presley Reflects on Dating Elvis as a Teenager: 'He Was Very, Very Lonely'

Priscilla Presley is opening up about her early days dating Elvis Presley.

During an interview with Fox 32 last week, Priscilla recalled how the King of Rock and Roll felt "lonely" when they first met in 1959.

“My relationship with Elvis, you know, people go, ‘Oh my god, how could this happen?’ It was not a sexual relationship, being 14 years old,” Priscilla, 78, said, recalling how they met when she was 14 and he was 24.

She noted that Elvis — who died at age 42 in 1977 — would pour "his heart out" to her, and she would listen: "He was very, very lonely."

In September, at the Venice Film Festival press conference for Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla biopic, she similarly said that the singer always “respected” her age, explaining they had an instant connection when they met on a military base in Germany because they felt as if they could talk to one another. 

“People think, ‘Oh, it was sex.’ No, it wasn’t,” Presley said at the press conference. “I never had sex with him. He was very kind, very soft, very loving, but he also respected the fact I was only 14 years old. We were more in line in thought, and that was our relationship.”

She continued, “It was very difficult for my parents to understand that Elvis would be so interested in me and why. And I really do think because I was more of a listener. Elvis would pour his heart out to me in every way in Germany: his fears, his hopes, the loss of his mother — which he never, ever got over. And I was the person who really, really sat there to listen and to comfort him. That was really our connection.”

“Even though I was 14, I was actually a little bit older in life — not in numbers. That was the attraction,” she added. 

Presley also spoke about how she mostly saw Elvis in private at the time. The musician’s ex-wife shared, “I didn’t know why he put so much trust in me, but he did. And I never, ever, ever told anyone that I was seeing him, and that was another issue that he loved, is the fact that I never gave him up in any way. I never told anyone at school that I was seeing him. So, we built a relationship and then our relationship went on until yes, I left.” 

"It wasn’t because I didn’t love him — he was the love of my life,” Presley then said about her separation from the recording artist in 1972. “It was the lifestyle that was so difficult for me, and I think any woman can relate to that.”

She continued, “But it didn’t mar our relationship; we still remained very, very close. And of course, we had our daughter [Lisa Marie], and I made sure that he saw her all the time. It was like we never left each other.”