Elvis May Not Have Been so Upset About His Divorce if Priscilla Presley ‘Had Run off With Someone Like Frank Sinatra,’ Said His Bodyguard

In 1973, Elvis and Priscilla Presley finalized their divorce. The couple had been growing distant for a while; Priscilla, tired of Elvis’ constant infidelity and controlling nature, eventually began an affair of her own. After they separated, Priscilla began publicly dating karate instructor Mike Stone, which Elvis did not handle well. His bodyguard believed that if Priscilla had dated a different type of man, Elvis may not have been as hurt.

Elvis Presley’s bodyguard shared why he thought the divorce was so hard on the singer

While Priscilla and Elvis were married, she began an affair with Stone, to whom Elvis had introduced her. They continued their relationship after her divorce. Priscilla enjoyed a much more normal life with Stone than she had with Elvis. 

“She was standing at the door of the tournament stamping the hands of paying customers who came in,” Elvis’ bodyguard Dave Hebler said in the book Elvis: What Happened? by Steve Dunleavy. “She was very sweet and so was Mike. Very, very natural.”

Hebler believed that Stone’s normalcy when compared to a megastar like Elvis was a major problem for the singer. 

“So this was Priscilla Presley and here she is stamping hands at her boyfriend’s tournament,” he said. “She was just helping out her struggling karate instructor boyfriend, who I guess in those days in a good week would have been making two hundred and fifty dollars. Maybe that was what bugged Elvis so much.”

Hebler wondered if Priscilla’s new relationship bruised Elvis’ ego. He may have been understanding if Priscilla’s romance had been with someone of similar star power. Instead, she had traded her gilded life with Elvis for one that saw her stamping hands at a karate tournament. 

“If she had run off with someone like Frank Sinatra maybe, somehow that would have erased the hurt ego,” Hebler said. “I don’t know. But a two-hundred-and-fifty-buck-a-week karate instructor, that must have hurt.”

Priscilla Presley shared how Mike Stone pushed her closer to divorce 

According to Priscilla, the differences between Elvis and Stone were exactly why she was drawn to the latter. Elvis treated her like a doll, controlling her looks and behavior and cloistering her away whenever he wanted. Stone, by contrast, treated her like an equal.

“I was seeing myself for the first time, and it was going to take a while for me to get used to the image,” she wrote in her book Elvis and Me. “I had a chance to observe marriages outside our inner circle, where the woman had just as much say as a man in everyday decisions and long-term goals.”

Priscilla realized that this was the type of relationship she wanted. The realization pushed her closer to Stone.

“I was confronted with the harsh realization that living the way I had for so long was very unnatural and detrimental to my wellbeing,” she wrote. “My relationship to Mike had now developed into an affair.” 

Elvis’ bodyguard said Priscilla was one of the only people Elvis truly loved

Elvis’ bodyguards were steadfastly loyal to him. Despite this, they could understand why Priscilla wanted to leave the marriage. 

“Now I don’t blame her for leaving Elvis,” his bodyguard Red West said. “She had a life that no normal woman could put up with.”

Still, West believed the love Elvis had for Priscilla was genuine. 

“I do know he loved that woman,” he said. “Even today he would never have a word said against her. He always told me, ‘I will always have a love for Priscilla.’ In fact, deep down, I believe that Priscilla was only one of two people he ever really did love in his whole life. He didn’t love us. We thought he did. But he did love that woman Priscilla.”