Priscilla Ann Presley (née Wagner, formerly Beaulieu; born May 24, 1945) is an American businesswoman and actress. She is the former wife of Elvis Presley, to whom she was married from 1967 to 1973 and with whom she shared one daughter, Lisa Marie Presley. Priscilla later co-founded and chaired Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE), which oversaw the public opening of her previous home, Graceland, as a museum.
As an actress, she portrayed Jane Spencer in The Naked Gun film series (1988–2025) and Jenna Wade on the CBS primetime soap Dallas (1983–1988).
Early life Priscilla Ann Wagner was born on May 24, 1945, at Brooklyn Naval Hospital in New York City. Her maternal grandfather, Albert Henry Iversen, was originally from Egersund, Norway,"Egen plass i bestefars fødeby" (March 14, 2008) NRK. and later emigrated to the United States, where he married Lorraine Davis, who was of Scots-Irish and English descent. Their only daughter, Anna Lillian Iversen, later known as Ann, was Priscilla's mother. Priscilla's biological father, James Frederick Wagner, was a U.S. Navy pilot from Cherrytree Township, Pennsylvania."Is Elvis' Priscilla Area Woman's Kin?" Titusville Herald. March 16, 1960, p. 2 He married Ann on August 10, 1944. Wagner died in a plane crash on November 3, 1945, when Priscilla was five months old."Cherrytree Man Dies in Crash". The Blizzard. November 5, 1945.
In 1948, Ann married United States Air Force officer Paul Beaulieu, a native of Québec, Canada. The couple raised Priscilla, along with half-siblings Donald, Michelle, Jeffrey, and twins Thomas and Timothy. Priscilla's surname was legally changed to Beaulieu on April 17, 1950. Due to her stepfather's military career, the family relocated frequently. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Priscilla stated, "We moved around a lot, and I didn’t stay in one school long enough to make close friends. I was quite shy when I was young, and I dreaded lunchtime at school. I often ate alone."
In 1956, the family settled in Del Valle, Texas, before Beaulieu was reassigned to Wiesbaden, West Germany. Upon arriving in West Germany, the Beaulieu family initially stayed at the Helene Hotel. After three months, the cost proved unsustainable, prompting them to search for a rental property. They eventually moved into a spacious apartment in a "vintage building constructed long before World War I." Shortly after settling in, they discovered that the building also operated as a brothel, but due to limited housing availability, they remained there.
Life with Elvis West Germany On September 13, 1959, Priscilla, then 14, met Elvis Presley, then 24, at his rented home in Bad Nauheim, West Germany, where he was stationed during his military service. She was introduced by Currie Grant, a U.S. Air Force officer. Priscilla met Presley several times after their initial meeting. During one of these early visits, he invited her upstairs to speak privately and shared memories of his mother, Gladys Presley, who had died in August 1958. Before she left, he kissed her goodbye—this was reportedly her first kiss. After their fourth date, her father stated that if the relationship was to continue, he wanted to meet Presley in person. Presley agreed and arrived in his Army uniform, accompanied by his father. During the meeting, Priscilla's parents outlined expectations for future visits, including transportation and curfews. Presley acknowledged their concerns and offered reassurances, allowing the relationship to continue under agreed conditions. Priscilla and Presley spent considerable time together until his departure from West Germany on March 2, 1960.
After Presley left Germany, Priscilla remained at home, unable to eat and struggling with insomnia. At school, she was approached by reporters asking whether he had called and noting that Nancy Sinatra had met him at the airport. Believing their relationship had ended, Priscilla feared she would not see him again. She was also concerned about Presley resuming his relationship with Anita Wood, whom he had dated before and after his overseas service. Twenty-one days after Presley left Germany, Priscilla received a phone call from him in the early morning. Their communication thereafter became sporadic, with calls arriving unexpectedly after long intervals.
Move to Graceland
In February 1962, after months without contact, Presley called Priscilla and suggested she visit him in Los Angeles. She was unsure her father would agree, but Presley made repeated calls to reassure her parents. He accepted all conditions: waiting until summer break, providing a first-class round-trip ticket, sending a detailed itinerary, ensuring constant chaperoning, and requiring daily letters home. Priscilla counted down the days until the visit. When she arrived, she was met by Joe Esposito and driven to Presley's home. Soon after, Presley invited her to join him on a trip to Las Vegas, deviating from the agreed itinerary. To avoid detection, Priscilla prewrote letters and arranged for them to be mailed from Los Angeles while she was away.
During the Las Vegas visit, Priscilla began using amphetamines and sleeping pills to adjust to Presley's nocturnal lifestyle. After a second visit at Christmas, her parents agreed to let her relocate to Memphis permanently in mid-March 1963, two months before her 18th birthday. As part of the arrangement, Presley was expected to marry her. Priscilla enrolled at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral School, an all-girls Catholic institution, and initially lived with Presley's father and stepmother. She spent increasing time at Graceland with Presley's grandmother, Minnie Mae Presley, gradually moving her belongings in until she was living there full-time.
Priscilla wanted to accompany Presley to Hollywood, but he repeatedly told her he was too busy and asked her to remain in Memphis. During that period, she read reports of an affair between Presley and his Viva Las Vegas co-star Ann-Margret. She confronted him, and he dismissed the stories as publicity-driven rumours, advising her not to trust the press. Over the following years, Presley had multiple intimate relationships with co-stars, though he denied each of them to Priscilla. She was eventually permitted to visit him in Hollywood, but her stays were brief.
Marriage and pregnancy
Shortly before Christmas 1966, Presley proposed to Priscilla, reportedly after Colonel Tom Parker reminded him of RCA's "morals clause" in his record contract. In a 1973 interview with Ladies' Home Journal, Priscilla said they were content living together but noted that "at that time, it wasn't nice for people to [just] live together". Accounts of Presley's attitude toward marriage differ: his cook Alberta and friend Marty Lacker described him as reluctant, while others, including Esposito, claimed he was excited to marry Priscilla.
In her memoir Elvis and Me, Priscilla wrote that Presley was passionate but insisted they wait until marriage before having intercourse, stating, "I'm not saying we can't do other things. It's just the actual encounter. I want to save it."Elvis And Me, p. 130. Priscilla said she was a virgin when she married and that she and Presley did not have sex until their wedding night. Biographer Suzanne Finstad alleged Priscilla had been sexually active earlier with Presley and with her high school boyfriends in Germany."In her book and in other public forums, Priscilla, perpetuating the myth, would say that her first night of marriage in the upstairs master bedroom of the Palm Springs house was the moment when she lost her virginity – conveniently overlooking her previous sexual relationships with ... Tommy Stewart, Peter von Wechmar, Jamie Lindberg, and possibly Ron Tapp, not to mention Currie's claim that she had confessed to having had intercourse with Elvis during their first few months in Germany."See Finstad, p. 211. However, Finstad's book Child Bride: The Untold Story of Priscilla Beaulieu Presley relied heavily on statements made by former Presley Army acquaintance Currie Grant, who was also cited as the source of the claim that Priscilla admitted to having sex with Presley in Germany. In August 1998, in a ruling concerning a lawsuit over another claim Grant made in the book, regarding an alleged affair between him and Priscilla before her marriage, a judge found that Grant made false statements that were repeated and used as "the source" for Child Bride.
Presley and Priscilla married on May 1, 1967, at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The ceremony, arranged by Parker for publicity, lasted eight minutes and was followed by a press conference and a $10,000 breakfast reception attended by representatives from MGM, RCA, and the William Morris Agency.
After the reception, Presley and Priscilla honeymooned briefly in Palm Springs before returning to Memphis on May 4. They spent three weeks at their private ranch near the Mississippi border, largely alone, though some members of Presley's inner circle joined them. To address tensions over the limited wedding guest list, the couple hosted a second reception at Graceland on May 29 for those not invited to the ceremony.
Priscilla soon learned she was pregnant. Concerned that it might affect their relationship, she considered an abortion, but she and Presley ultimately decided against it. Their daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, was born on February 1, 1968, nine months after their wedding.
Separation and divorce While Presley was filming Live a Little, Love a Little (1968), Priscilla began private dance lessons and developed a brief romantic relationship with her instructor, referred to as "Mark" in Elvis and Me. She later expressed regret. Despite affairs on both sides, the early years of their marriage were reportedly happy. After Presley's 1968 television special, his career resurged, and he spent increasing time touring and performing in Las Vegas, while Priscilla remained at home with their daughter.
Encouraged by Presley, Priscilla took up karate to share his interests and occupy her time. In 1968, she saw Mike Stone for the first time during her second honeymoon in Hawaii. In 1972, she met instructor Stone backstage at one of Elvis's concerts and began an affair. However, the year 1972 is not confirmed by Stone, who wrote that he met Priscilla for the second time at a karate event at Bolsa Chica High School on May 15, 1971. She later wrote, "I still loved Elvis, greatly, but over the next few months, I knew I would have to make a crucial decision regarding my destiny." According to her memoir, Presley later summoned her to his hotel suite and "forcefully made love to me...[saying] 'This is how a real man makes love to his woman. In a later interview, Priscilla said she regretted her phrasing, calling it an overstatement. Jerry Schilling stated that Priscilla and Presley spoke in his dressing room, not in his suite.
Priscilla wrote that Presley's attempt at reconciliation came too late and lacked sensitivity. She cited his earlier comment that he had "never been able to make love to a woman who had a child" and described the emotional impact of their sexual difficulties: "I am beginning to doubt my own sexuality, as a woman. My physical and emotional needs were unfulfilled." She concluded, "this was not the gentle, understanding man I grew to love." Years later, on Loose Women, Priscilla said she and Presley did have sex after Lisa Marie was born.
The couple separated on February 23, 1972, and filed for legal separation on July 26. Priscilla sued Presley for fraud to reopen the divorce by default in May 1973. The divorce was finalized on October 9, 1973.