Priscilla Presley says that she learned about her then-husband Elvis Presley’s affairs in an unexpected way: by reading fan mail sent to their home.
Speaking at a panel at MegaCon Orlando on Friday, Feb. 7, Priscilla, 79, said it was difficult to navigate a marriage shadowed in fame and one in which her husband was constantly surrounded by others.
“It was hard, you know, to get used to all the guys, not just Elvis but all the guys, they were like this, and I love them all, but it was a man’s world, and I was really the only woman,” she said.
Further complicating matters was Elvis’ schedule in the years after their 1967 wedding, Priscilla said.
“He was gone a lot … and I would hear stories and the thing that did it for me was we had a home in Palm Springs, and … I decided to go up and check the mail and make sure the house was okay,” she explained.
As she began removing the mail from the mailbox, she looked through it.
“A lot of it was like, ‘Oh Elvis, thank you for the invite. Charlie Hodge [Elvis’ best friend and confidante] asked me to come up and I’m so glad you, you know, you greeted me and my girlfriends,’ ” she said.
And other letters were more explicit.
” ‘Elvis, I had the best night with you. Thank you so much,’ ” Priscilla said, adding that she thought, “Hello, it’s getting worse,” as she continued to read.
“I decided, gosh, he’s living another life and and I just couldn’t take it. Every time he’d go to Vegas or even Palm Springs, it was, you know, it was it was difficult.”
Despite their marital struggles, Priscilla spoke highly of her time with Elvis, saying at MegaCon that the marriage ended “lovingly.”
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“He was famous, he was loving, he was a beautiful, beautiful man, [but] I just couldn’t take it. It just was not a good life for me,” she said, adding that the two still maintained a close friendship, even after their divorce in 1973.
She continued: “We still we kept our relationship. We did. He would drop by my home unannounced, and I was going with someone by the way, and he would come unannounced. Thank God it was two o’clock in the morning, and I knew who it was, so I quickly tried to get to the door before he rang the doorbell, and of course he came in, we went in the kitchen, we talked for a couple of hours.”
Priscilla’s appearance at MegaCon Orlando comes a little more than one year after she accompanied granddaughter Riley Keough to the Emmy Awards in January 2024, where Keough was up for outstanding lead actress in a limited or anthology series for Daisy Jones & the Six.
The family outing followed the end of a legal battle that ensued after the January 2023 death of Priscilla’s daughter Lisa Marie. Presley and Keough came to a settlement agreement over the late singer’s trust that May, and it was officially approved by a judge in November 2023.
After reaching the agreement, Priscilla shared a statement exclusively with PEOPLE, expressing that “the Presley family is stronger than ever.”
“As a family, we are pleased that we resolved this together,” the statement read. “My family and I hope that everyone will grant us the privacy we have needed to properly grieve Lisa Marie and spend personal time together. We love and appreciate all of you and the Presley family is stronger than ever.”
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