In 1973, Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley divorced after being together for nearly half of Priscilla’s life. They still loved each other, but Priscilla knew the relationship had grown detrimental to herself. When she announced that she was leaving the relationship, she shocked Elvis, who didn’t seem nearly as aware of the problems that had been plaguing their marriage. Several years later, he said that letting the marriage fall apart was one of the biggest mistakes he ever made.
Elvis Presley said one of the biggest regrets of his life was letting his marriage fall apart
After lengthy periods of time apart from each other and personal growth for Priscilla, she realized the relationship was no longer serving her. While she wished she could make their marriage work, she knew that she had to move on in order to feel fulfilled as a person. When she told Elvis, he responded with shock and devastation.
“Are you out of your mind? You have everything any woman could want. You can’t mean that, Sattnin. Goddamn,” Elvis told Priscilla, per her book Elvis and Me. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing. You mean I’ve been so blind that I didn’t know what’s going on? I’ve been so wrapped up I didn’t see this coming.”
Though they divorced, Priscilla and Elvis remained close, both for the sake of their daughter and because they still loved each other. During one conversation not long before Elvis’ death, he shared his dissatisfaction with his life and his new fiancée, Ginger Alden. Priscilla asked him if he felt ready to settle down with one woman; one of her biggest problems with their relationship was his constant cheating. He said he was.
“Yes,” he told her. “Now more than ever. I know I’ve done some stupid things, but the stupidest was not realizing what I had until I lost it. I want my family back.”
Elvis Presley shared a vision with Priscilla about their future life together
In this conversation, Priscilla felt moved by Elvis’ sorrow. She wondered if she would be able to rebuild a life with Elvis.
“I wondered if there was some way we could make it work,” she wrote. “‘Maybe it was just too early in life for us, Sattnin,’ I said. ‘Maybe one day there will be a time for us.'”
Elvis shared the future he could see for himself and Priscilla.
“‘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.'”
Priscilla said it was difficult to know if she would have remarried Elvis
Though Priscilla considered a reunion with Elvis, they never got back together. He died in 1977, four years after they finalized their divorce. She wasn’t sure that they would have remarried if Elvis had lived.
“Oh, my gosh. That would be — that’s a difficult question to answer. I mean, I don’t know,” she told a caller on Larry King Live. “You know, both of us were — we had a really nice, very close relationship. You know, before he died and — we used to kid around about it, you know…”
She referenced their conversations about their possible future together.
“Well, just kidding around, you know, being old and sitting in front of Graceland in rocking chairs,” she said. “You know, we had two chairs out in front, and, you know, it was a fun thing to do, but — or riding motorcycles when we’re in our 80s, because we both loved to ride motorcycles.”