Priscilla Presley opens up about the death of her daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, for the first time in her new book, Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis.
“I’m sharing it because it’s the first time I’ve ever lost a child. I have two, obviously, but I don’t wish that on anyone,” Priscilla told Savannah Guthrie on the Monday, September 22, episode of Today. (Priscilla shared Lisa Marie with her late ex-husband, Elvis Presley, and her son, Navarone Garibaldi, with ex Marco Garibaldi.)
Lisa Marie died at the age of 54 from complications of a small bowel obstruction in January 2023. Priscilla said she knew Lisa Marie was “not well” when they hung out together for the last time just days before her death. Priscilla explained that the two agreed to grab a drink after going to the movies together.
“And then, about two minutes later, she said, ‘Mom, I don’t know. I don’t think I can do it.’ I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ And she said, ‘My stomach. My stomach really, really hurts. I’ve been having a hard time with it.’ And I go, ‘Okay. Whatever you need to do,’” Priscilla said, adding that Lisa Marie agreed to call her the following day.
“The next day, I waited. I thought she was gonna give me a call. And then, I get a call that Lisa was in the hospital, as we know it, and that she passed,” Priscilla stated. “And to this day, I can’t get over it, especially having a great night before, and then the next day, taken away.”
Noting that the mother-daughter duo had “ups and downs” over the years, Guthrie asked Priscilla if the two found “peace” before Lisa Marie’s passing. “We did. We were really close,” Priscilla revealed.
During the interview, Guthrie also asked Priscilla about her legal fight with her granddaughter Riley Keough over control of Lisa Marie’s estate after her death. The pair’s dispute ended with Keough being named the sole trustee of her late mother’s estate in June 2023.
“Riley and I are very, very close,” Priscilla said of her and Keough’s current relationship on Today. “In fact, we just spent the time together the day before yesterday, and she’s amazing. I mean, she truly is. I love her to death. She’s her own person, did her own thing at a very young age, and is thriving.”
Keough is the eldest of of Lisa Marie’s two children with her ex-husband Danny Keough, along with son Benjamin, who died at the age of 27 in 2020. Lisa Marie also welcomed twin daughters, Harper and Finley, in 2008 with her ex-husband Michael Lockwood.
Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images
Lisa Marie’s death is one of many topics Priscilla discusses in Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis, which hits bookshelves on Tuesday, September 23. Though the two divorced in 1973, Priscilla told Guthrie that she still considers the singer “the love of my life.”
“I learned a lot from him about life, about business, about caring, and he was very, very special in every way,” she said of how Elvis inspired her new book. “Even today, he still has the amount of fans, almost as many [as] when he was alive, and that really says a lot.”
Today, Weekdays, 7 a.m. ET, NBC