Priscilla Presley 'You Never Really Get Over Losing a Child'

THE LEGEND OPENS UP LIKE NEVER BEFORE ABOUT HER DAUGHTER LISA MARIE'S TRAGIC DEATH-AND HOW HER FAMILY KEEPS HER STRONG

- BRIANNE TRACY

Love and Loss

Priscilla is still coming to terms with the deaths of Elvis and their daughter Lisa Marie (left, with her parents in 1970, and right, with Priscilla in 2022). "It was hard on all of us. It still is," she says.

As she settles in on the Beverly Hills set of her People cover shoot, Priscilla Presley makes a surprising confession: She has lived in the public eye since she first met Elvis Presley in 1959, when she was just 14, but even now at 80 she still isn’t used to reading headlines about her famous family. “There’s been so much that’s untruthful out there—things like Elvis is still alive and hidden somewhere, all this stuff about how the family is battling,” she says. “I want to clear some things up.”

Over the course of nearly an hour, Priscilla does just that: No, Elvis is not still alive, although she wishes he was. And no, she’s not feuding with her granddaughter Riley Keough, 36, whose mother, Priscilla and Elvis’s only child, Lisa Marie Presley, died in 2023 at age 54. “Riley and I have never had a problem,” Priscilla says. “I just have one battle, and that’s with a certain person.”

Though she doesn’t get specific, it’s clear she’s talking about her former business partner Brigitte Kruse. Kruse and another former business partner, Kevin Fialko, are suing the star for $50 million, alleging fraud and breach of contract; Priscilla is suing them and others, alleging financial elder abuse against her and the theft of $1 million. In their lawsuit Kruse and Fialko accuse Priscilla of removing Lisa Marie from life support to regain control of the Elvis estate (which Riley oversees as the sole heir), a claim Priscilla’s lawyer calls “despicable.” The lawsuit also alleges tension between Priscilla and Riley following Lisa Marie’s death, which the two slammed in a joint statement on Sept. 5 as “untrue” and “deeply hurtful.”