Priscilla Presley details Elvis's infidelities during Las Vegas years in new memoir interview

Priscilla Presley offered new details about her life with Elvis Presley during a recent appearance on the Today show, where she discussed the personal revelations in her memoir Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis. Revealing a private struggle behind the public glamour, she described a marriage marked by infidelity during Elvis’s Las Vegas residency, which began in 1969 and helped redefine the couple’s public image as the King of Rock and Roll and his bride.

She said that during Elvis’s Las Vegas years, their life felt fundamentally different from the image fans saw. “Our life was very different, you know? Very, very different. And when he was in Vegas, you know, he was really starting his career back again into Vegas,” Presley said. She recalled having a second home in Palm Springs and driving there to check on it when Elvis was in town, making sure the house and maids were ready for his return. The second home became a quiet beacon of daily life away from Graceland, a place where she hoped to regain a sense of normalcy amid a volatile schedule.

While she kept up appearances of a perfect union, Presley described the troubling signs that materialized at the Palm Springs property. “If it’s clean, if the maids had cleaned everything before he comes home,” she recalled, hinting at the pressure to maintain a flawless front. When she checked the mailbox at that second home, she found letters from “all girls” addressing Elvis—letters that she said reflected things she “really disapproved of and didn’t like.” “They would go and meet Elvis at the house on weekends when he went, and it was another life,” she added. “Now, he would come home great and wonderful. He was still a good husband, but it was just too many of us.”

The interview touches on a timeline that has long been part of the Elvis narrative: Presley met Elvis in 1959 while he was serving with the U.S. Army in Germany; they married in Las Vegas in 1967 and welcomed daughter Lisa Marie Presley one year later. The couple’s public story—marriage, a daughter who would become a central figure in their legacy, and a phenomenon that defined pop culture—stood in stark contrast to the private realities Presley describes. Lisa Marie’s life and, later, her death in 2023 at age 54, have continued to color discussions about Elvis and Priscilla's enduring bond.

Priscilla filed for divorce from Elvis in 1972, with the split finalized a year later. Yet she has repeatedly stressed that the decision to separate was not rooted in a lack of love. “I did not divorce him because I didn’t love him — he was the love of my life, truly,” she said in a 2016 interview, a sentiment she has continued to convey while promoting the memoir. The divorce did not erase the complexity of their relationship, nor did it erase the affection that persisted between them for years after their separation.

In the years following the split, Presley moved on in her personal life, including a relationship with Robert Kardashian, whom she dated beginning in the wake of her divorce. She recalled an incident in which Elvis called during the night while she was in bed with Kardashian, underscoring the era’s charged dynamics. Presley wrote that Elvis would have been upset if he’d known Kardashian was in her bedroom, a detail that underscored the tense boundaries of romance within the circle surrounding Elvis. She also noted that Elvis “always carried a loaded gun, sometimes more than one,” a reminder of the era’s heightened emotions and the security that surrounded the star. Kardashian, who would later marry Kris Jenner in 1978, and Presley’s relationship with him ended in 1976 due in part to his demanding work as a lawyer.

Priscilla has described moving through these years without remarrying, focusing instead on raising Lisa Marie and navigating a complex family legacy. She later had a son, Navarone Garibaldi, with Marco Garibaldi Garcia, whom she dated from 1984 to 2006. The arrangement reflected a new phase in her life, rooted in personal growth rather than public spectacle, as she continued to manage the Presley name alongside her own endeavors.

The memoir also contains sharp assessments of Lisa Marie’s highly publicized marriage to Michael Jackson, which lasted from 1994 to 1996. Presley writes that she believed Jackson was manipulating the situation and notes her belief that Jackson sought a link to the Presley dynasty beyond romance. “I knew in my bones that Michael wasn’t marrying Lisa Marie; he was marrying the Presley dynasty,” she wrote, calling Jackson a manipulative man. Those passages, which have drawn renewed attention amid renewed interest in Elvis’s era, illustrate the broader tensions that have shaped the family’s public narrative for decades.

Softly, As I Leave You is published as Presley continues to reflect on a life lived in the glare of fame while maintaining a private resolve to understand what lies beyond the spotlight. The Today interview and the memoir publication have sparked renewed discussion about Elvis’s personal life, the boundaries of celebrity at mid-century, and how Priscilla Presley has navigated the enormous influence of a marriage that remains central to American pop culture.

As the Presley family’s story continues to unfold in books, documentaries, and renewed media attention, Priscilla’s account adds a layered perspective to a relationship that once defined an era. Elvis’s legacy—built on music, performance, and a magnetism that drew millions—remains inseparable from the private life that Presley reveals, years after the couple’s split and after Elvis’s death in 1977 at age 42. The memoir’s release invites readers to reassess the era’s glamour in light of the intimate experiences that shaped one of rock ’n’ roll’s most enduring sagas.

The conversation surrounding Elvis and Priscilla’s relationship is part of a larger cultural examination of the 1960s and 1970s, where fame and privacy collided in ways that continue to influence how artists and their families are portrayed. With Softly, As I Leave You, Presley offers an explicit, personal lens on that dynamic, providing context for fans and historians seeking to understand the full arc of Elvis’s career and the life his wife built in its wake.