Elvis’ Bodyguard Said Priscilla Presley Was ‘Only One of Two People’ Elvis Ever Truly Loved in His Life
Elvis Presley had many girlfriends, but he was only ever married to Priscilla Presley. The couple dated for years before marriage and shared a child. Even after their divorce, they remained on friendly terms. According to one of Elvis’ bodyguards, the musician never lost the love he had for Priscilla. He believed Priscilla was one of only two people Elvis truly loved in his life.
Elvis’ bodyguard said the musician deeply loved Priscilla Presley
In 1973, Elvis and Priscilla finalized their divorce. Priscilla had felt a growing distance between them and was fed up with Elvis’ constant infidelity. Elvis’ friend and bodyguard Red West said he never faulted Priscilla for leaving the marriage.
“There is no doubt that his ego was very badly hurt,” West said in the book Elvis: What Happened? “It happened right before our eyes. We knew it was going on when he didn’t even know. Now I don’t blame her for leaving Elvis. She had a life that no normal woman could put up with.”
Still, West said despite the many difficulties Priscilla faced in the marriage, Elvis truly loved her.
“I do know he loved that woman,” he said. “Even today he would never have a word said against her. He always told me, ‘I will always have a love for Priscilla.’”
West believed that Elvis reserved this kind of love for only two people in his life. While West did not name the other person he believed Elvis truly loved, the two most likely candidates are his mother, Gladys, and his daughter, Lisa Marie.
“In fact, deep down, I believe that Priscilla was only one of two people he ever really did love in his whole life,” West said. “He didn’t love us. We thought he did. But he did love that woman Priscilla.”
Another bodyguard said it stung Elvis that Priscilla dated someone like Mike Stone
After their split, Priscilla went public with her relationship with Mike Stone, the man with whom she had an affair during her marriage. Elvis obsessively thought about Stone and even tried to put a hit out on him. Another one of Elvis’ bodyguards, Dave Hebler, thought Stone’s job as a karate instructor was part of why Elvis hated him so badly. She had chosen a relatively normal person over Elvis, a living legend.
“So this was Priscilla Presley and here she is stamping hands at her boyfriend’s tournament,” Hebler said. “She was just helping out her struggling karate instructor boyfriend, who I guess in those days in a good week would have been making two hundred and fifty dollars. Maybe that was what bugged Elvis so much. If she had run off with someone like Frank Sinatra maybe, somehow that would have erased the hurt ego. I don’t know. But a two-hundred-and-fifty-buck-a-week karate instructor, that must have hurt.”
The couple talked vaguely about reuniting
Priscilla and Stone’s relationship did not last, but she remained friendly with Elvis until his death. They even abstractly discussed getting back together in the future.
“I wondered if there was some way we could make it work,” Priscilla wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “‘Maybe it was just too early in life for us, Sattnin,’ I said. ‘Maybe one day there will be a time for us.’”
Though they never made definite plans, Elvis played along with this fantasy.
“‘Yeah,’ Elvis laughed. ‘When I’m seventy and you’re sixty. We’ll both be so old we’ll look really silly, racing around in golf carts.’”
