Elvis Presley was serving as a 24-year-old soldier in Germany when he began a romantic relationship with Priscilla Beaulieu, who was only a high school freshman at the time.
When Priscilla Beaulieu was 11 years old, her stepfather brought home a record as a gift for her. “I don’t know what this Elvis guy is all about,” he told her, “but he must be something special. I stood in line with half the armed forces at the PX to get this for you; everybody wants it.”
Priscilla played the record for the first time in her home at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, Texas, and listened to “Blue Suede Shoes.” Just three years later, she met the artist behind the song: Elvis Presley.
Their lives intersected in West Germany, where Elvis was serving in the U.S. Army and Priscilla was living with her family on an Air Force base. He was 24, and she was just 14. Elvis, one of the world’s biggest rock stars, met Priscilla, a ninth-grader, at a fateful party in 1959. When he found out her age, he chuckled and said, “Why, you’re just a baby.”
Despite the significant age gap between Elvis and Priscilla, and the confusion it caused her parents, the young teenager and the rock star began seeing each other frequently. Priscilla balanced her days at high school with evenings at Elvis’ house, where she attended parties with him and his friends and spent intimate moments cuddling and kissing him.
To Priscilla’s amazement and joy, Elvis continued to call her even after he returned to the United States.
Eventually, Elvis arranged for Priscilla to move to Memphis, where she finished high school while living at Graceland with one of the most famous men in the world. According to Priscilla, they didn’t consummate their relationship until their marriage in 1967.
By the time they married, Priscilla was 21 and had been in a relationship with Elvis Presley for over seven years. However, her marriage to the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll wasn’t the fairytale she had imagined. Despite having a daughter, Lisa Marie, both Elvis and Priscilla were unfaithful, leading Priscilla to realize she needed more from their relationship.
Living in his shadow, Priscilla felt confined. As she later wrote, Elvis had “become my father, husband, and very nearly God.”
This is the story of Priscilla Presley, whose life with Elvis serves as the inspiration for the 2023 Sofia Coppola film “Priscilla.”
Priscilla Before Elvis
Priscilla Ann Wagner was born on May 24, 1945, in New York City. Around that same time, her future husband, then 10 years old, gave one of his first public musical performances at a Mississippi talent show, where he placed fifth.
Her father, a U.S. Navy pilot, tragically died in a plane crash when Priscilla was just six months old. Her mother, Ann, remarried in 1948 to an Air Force officer named Joseph Paul Beaulieu, and Priscilla took his last name. Due to his military career, the family moved frequently, and by 1959, they were stationed in West Germany.
Despite seeing herself as “an insecure Air Force brat,” Priscilla always felt a sense of destiny. “I always knew that something extraordinary was going to happen to me,” she shared with PEOPLE in 1978.
In West Germany, something extraordinary happened indeed.
According to Priscilla, she was at the Eagles Club, a popular hangout for families of American servicemembers, when she noticed a man in his 20s staring at her. He introduced himself as Currie Grant, engaged her in conversation, and asked if she liked Elvis Presley.
According to an essay she later wrote for PEOPLE, Priscilla replied, “Of course. Who doesn’t?” Grant then revealed that Elvis was his friend and mentioned that he and his wife wanted to take her to a party at Elvis’s house.
After meeting Currie and receiving his assurance that he would look after her, Priscilla’s parents agreed to let their 14-year-old daughter attend the party. Two weeks later, Currie picked up Priscilla and drove her to a house in Bad Nauheim.
It was there that Elvis and Priscilla met for the first time, an encounter that would prove to be momentous for both of them.
The Early Days Of Elvis And Priscilla’s Blooming Relationship
As Priscilla later recounted, she noticed Elvis immediately when she and Currie walked into the room. She thought he looked “more handsome” than in the movies and “younger and more vulnerable” with his military haircut. Currie introduced them, and Elvis remarked: “Well, what have we here? What are you, about a junior or senior in high school?”
When Priscilla admitted she was just a freshman, Elvis—already famous for his films and songs like “Hound Dog” and “Heartbreak Hotel”—laughed and said, “Why, you’re just a baby.”
Though nothing happened between them that night, the 14-year-old felt Elvis was trying to get her attention as he played the piano and sang. Just a few days later, despite their 10-year age difference, he asked Currie to invite her over again. And then again.
Before long, Elvis cut straight to the point: “I want to be alone with you, Priscilla,” he said during her third visit to the house, according to Priscilla’s essay for PEOPLE. “Will you come upstairs to my room?” He added, “I swear I’ll never do anything to harm you. I’ll treat you just like a sister.”
As Priscilla tells it, they merely cuddled and talked, and Elvis shared the story of his mother Gladys’s recent death. When Priscilla left, Elvis gave her her “first real kiss” and said, “We have plenty of time, Little One.”
However, Priscilla’s new relationship did not go unnoticed by her parents. Her stepfather insisted on meeting the singer, laying down some ground rules, and interrogating him about his interest in the ninth grader, especially considering their age difference. Priscilla later wrote that Elvis “disarmed Dad, just as he did my mother.”
Soon, her days were spent at school and her nights with the rock star. Priscilla’s grades suffered as her “concentration was totally on Elvis.” But her all-consuming love affair seemed to have an end date. In March 1960, Elvis returned to the United States.
“I want you to promise me you’ll stay the way you are,” Elvis said to Priscilla before he left, according to Vogue. “Untouched, as I left you.”
Priscilla agreed, but soon heard rumors of Elvis being romantically linked to Nancy Sinatra and did not hear from him for weeks. Then, one day, her phone rang at 3 a.m. It was Elvis. “Hi, Baby,” he said. “How’s my little girl?”
How Old Was Priscilla When She Married Elvis?
For the coming seven years, Elvis and Priscilla continued to get to know each other. Elvis flew Priscilla to California in 1962 and even convinced her family to let her come live with him in Memphis the following year. During this time, Priscilla reportedly remained a virgin as Elvis took comand over her life and image.
“Something in his Southern upbringing had taught him that the ‘right’ girl was to be saved for marriage,” she later wrote. “I was that girl. At the same time, he molded me into his woman. I wore the clothes, hairstyle, and makeup of his careful choosing.”
At the close of 1966, Elvis proposed to Priscilla with a stunning three-and-a-half-carat diamond ring, surrounded by 20 detachable diamonds. A few months later, in May 1967, they tied the knot at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas, in a very private ceremony attended by only 14 people.
They managed to keep the news under wraps for as long as possible. Priscilla was 21, and Elvis was 32. When the news finally leaked, many of Elvis’ fans were heartbroken, with some even sending frantic letters about becoming nuns or considering suicide.
Priscilla later revealed that Elvis’ manager, Tom Parker, pushed for the marriage due to concerns about a “morals clause” in Elvis’ contract. Parker realized that it wouldn’t be favorable for the public to learn that Elvis was cohabitating with Priscilla while also having other relationships. Despite this, Priscilla recalled that Elvis made the marriage feel meaningful and special.
“He carried me across the threshold of our house singing the ‘Hawaiian Wedding Song,'” Priscilla wrote in Elvis and Me. “He stopped and gave me a long, loving kiss, then proceeded to carry me upstairs to our bedroom.”
Nine months after their wedding, Priscilla welcomed their daughter, Lisa Marie. (Tragically, Lisa Marie passed away in 2023 at the age of 54.)
However, issues began to arise in Elvis and Priscilla’s relationship. As Priscilla later revealed, Elvis struggled with how to relate to her once she became a mother. He even admitted that he had “never been able to make love to a woman who had a child,” leaving Priscilla feeling that her “physical and emotional needs were unfulfilled.”
While Elvis was away on tour, Priscilla had a few brief affairs and began to understand the need to establish her own identity apart from her husband’s. “With Elvis,” she shared with PEOPLE in 1978, “my life was his life. He had to be happy. We never disturbed him. My problems were secondary.”
Four decades later, she elaborated on this feeling. In an interview with TODAY, Priscilla Presley reflected: “You obviously didn’t have your own life. You lived his life. You saw the movies he wanted to see. You listened to the music he listened to. You go to places he would go so you really kind of lost yourself. As a woman, I didn’t really know who I was.”
After six years of marriage, they parted ways in 1973. Elvis Presley passed away only four years later, at the age of 42. Yet for Priscilla Presley, this marked the start of a new chapter in her life.
Priscilla’s Life After Elvis
After Elvis’s death, Priscilla Presley focused on her career, becoming an actress with notable roles in films and TV shows, including a praised storyline on Dallas. She opened Graceland to the public in 1982 and shared her experiences with Elvis in her 1985 memoir, Elvis and Me.
Priscilla has continued to work on Elvis-related projects, including the 2023 film Priscilla, which highlights her role in his life.
“[T]elling his story wasn’t something I wanted to do but had to do, because of all that’s been said and written about him,” she explained in a 1988 interview. “I have to fight for his reputation, his ideas, his image… I have to protect Elvis — he was very misunderstood.”