Elvis Presley Used to Keep Teen Priscilla up All Night on School Nights — Here’s What They Were Doing

Dating a rock star brings a whole assortment of added pressures on top of the usual relationship pressures. There’s the fame, the performing schedule and the lack of privacy for starters. When Elvis Presley dated Priscilla, it interrupted her high school schedule too.

Priscilla was on the Seven Networks Sunday Night podcast in 2017 to discuss her memories of Elvis. When she spoke about their courtship, she revealed that Elvis’s schedule proved rather incompatible with her high school routine. 

Priscilla Presley was only 14 when she met Elvis 

Back in 1959, Priscilla was only 14. She had the chance to meet Elvis Presley and they hit it off. Elvis would insist they wait until they were married and she was older to sleep together. 

“I was only 14, actually three months into 14 and visited him at his home in Bad Nauheim Goethestrase [Germany],” Presley said. “Never expecting in my wildest dreams I would get a call to come to visit again. We connected right away. Unbeknownst to me, that first evening I didn’t know that, but I knew that he was singing songs and looking at me and trying to make me laugh because I was very, very shy. It was more yes or no answers. He was 24 years old.”

Priscilla was around for a fraught time in Elvis’s career. She helped him navigate the difficult transition.

“I was there for his 25th birthday and we celebrated his birthday just before he came back to the States,” she said. “That was in January. He was leaving in March with many, many fears of returning. I was kind of a sounding board for him. I was the person he let out so much of his fears, his loves, his concerns, his thoughts about returning to the states and being forgotten. He was riddled with all of that because he was away for almost two years.”

Priscilla Presley still had to finish high school

While dating Elvis Presley may have been a surprise, the American school calendar didn’t adjust for Priscilla. She continued going to school, despite Elvis’s late night habits. 

He didn’t make it easy because we would go to the theater at night. Sometimes I laugh at that. I look back and I go, ‘What was he thinking?’ I had to be up and  at school at eight o’clock in the morning. So we would go to the theater and watch a couple of movies. We would leave at 10:30 at night because it was after Johnny Carson’s monologue. And then sometimes we’d watch two or three movies. I’d be home maybe five o’clock in the morning and have to get up at seven to get ready for school and be back by one in the afternoon.

Priscilla Presley, Sunday Night podcast, 8/22/17

Priscilla kept her life with Elvis Presley separate from high school

Priscilla took it upon herself to keep her high school life separate from her nights with Elvis. Eventually, they made too many headlines to ignore, but she never wanted to draw attention to her private life. 

“Obviously towards the end of school they knew who I was but I was very private and very respectful,” she said. “I look back now, I don’t know how I pulled it off. I really don’t. I never told anyone. Vernan [Presley] did take me to school a couple of times in a limo which I had asked that he didn’t do that. I asked him please not to because it would raise a lot of questions and it would put me on the spot, but I was really protective of Elvis even then.”