Priscilla Presley Shared the Moment She Knew the Chances of Her Marriage to Elvis Surviving Were ‘Slim’
Priscilla Presley was thrilled when Elvis Presley’s career improved, but she hadn’t realized the impact it would have on her marriage. After a comeback special and a series of successful shows in Las Vegas, Elvis was finally content in his career. Unfortunately, with this creative reinvigoration came increased time away from home. The strain of the distance grew so great that Priscilla worried her marriage wouldn’t survive.
Priscilla Presley said distance was not good for her marriage to Elvis
After thrilling the audience in a concert at the International Hotel in Las Vegas, Elvis signed a five-year contract with the hotel. He would perform a series of concerts twice each year. He also began touring for the first time in years.
While Priscilla attended several of these performances, Elvis eventually told her she had to stop. He felt that if she joined him on the road, he had to let the wives of his entourage come along as well. He also insisted on taking trips to Palm Springs with his entourage to decompress. The distance between Elvis and Priscilla yawned wider with each passing day.
“The chances of our marriage surviving were slim indeed as long as he continued to live apart from Lisa and me, and in bachelor quarters at that,” Priscilla wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “It came down to how much longer I could stand the separation.”
She believed that Elvis didn’t have nearly as much of a problem with the distance as she did. He liked his quasi-bachelor lifestyle in a way that concerned Priscilla. He’d cheated on her in the past, and she worried he was using their time apart to spend time with other women.
“Elvis wanted to have his cake and eat it too,” she wrote. “And now, as the tours and long engagements took him even further from his family, I realized that we might never reach my dream of togetherness. I had trouble believing that Elvis was always faithful, and the more he kept us apart, the more my suspicions grew.”
She admitted that she hadn’t enjoyed life on the road
While Priscilla dreaded her time apart from Elvis, she admitted that she hadn’t liked life on the road. Once Elvis established his “no wives on the road” policy, she felt a bit of relief.
“I didn’t really miss the one-night stands, a tedious routine at best: Jump off the plane, rush to the hotel, unpack as little as possible since you had to check out the next day, go to the performance, then back to the hotel for a little rest before heading back to the airport,” she wrote. “Everything was the same except for the name of the town.”
Priscilla Presley had to choose to fight for her marriage
Though Priscilla stopped traveling with Elvis, she still visited him when he was in Vegas for residencies. Eventually, he told her not to do that as much, either.
“It was the day that Elvis suggested I come to Vegas less often that I became really upset and suspicious,” Priscilla wrote. “He’d decided that we wives would attend opening and closing nights only.”
She knew that this decision could land a punishing blow to their marriage and had to actively decide to fight for their relationship.
“I knew then I’d have to fight for our relationship or accept the fact that we were now gradually going to grow apart as so many couples in show business do,” she wrote. “As a couple, we’d never sat down to plan out a future. Elvis, individually, was stretching as an artist, but as man and wife we needed a common reality.”
