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In her posthumous memoir that was co-written and finished by her daughter Riley Keough, Lisa Marie Presley made rare and heartbreaking comments about the death of her father Elvis Presley. “I think [the book] is the first time she’s talked in detail about his death,” Keough told Oprah Winfrey in an upcoming interview.
In a clip of the touching conversation, Winfrey prompts Keough — the oldest of Lisa Marie’s four kids — by saying Lisa Marie “instinctively knew something was off” on the morning of Elvis’ untimely death even though she was just 9 years old.
“She said goodnight to him [the night before] and I think she knew saying ‘goodnight’ — like she had some kind of a sense …” Keough said, trailing off into what some might say is the even sadder part.
“I think she had a sense many times that he wasn’t OK,” she continued. “She would tell me that sometimes she would find him in his bathroom looking kind of out of it or holding onto the railing to stand up straight.”
And that’s not all. Lisa Marie, who died at 54 in Jan. 2024, would write letters when she was young to Elvis and her mom Priscilla Presley with a gut-wrenching plea. The interview clip then cuts to an image of a letter written in a little kid’s scrawl with misspellings, no punctuation, and smiley faces at the end.
“I Love my MoMMy and DaDDy,” the letter starts, “And I hope you gis [sic] don’T die Love Lisa.”
Of course, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll tragically died at age 42 in 1977, but in From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie detailed her childhood — the time before she “instinctively knew” — with her ultra-famous dad. Believe it or not, he found ways to be ultra-normal, even going to a parent-teacher conference.
Yup! Elvis went to parent-teacher conferences.
“I knew he was coming, and I couldn’t wait,” reads an excerpt. “I could feel the teachers’ nervousness and excitement, too. My little student friends were so excited that I got even more excited — everybody was just running around crazy.”
“Then my dad showed up,” she continued. “He got out of the car and he had on a respectable outfit — black pants and some kind of blouse — but he was also wearing a big, majestic belt with buckles and jewels and chains, as well as sunglasses. He was smoking a cigar. I met him at the car, and I walked up the walkway with him, and I just remember that feeling of walking next to him, holding his hand.”
And that’s just the tip of the chaotic yet heartwarming iceberg. Winfrey’s interview with Keough airs on Oct. 8 at 8 p.m. EST on CBS, and the eye-opening memoir — which is currently available for pre-order — officially hits shelves on Oct. 14.