Elvis Presley's Brazen Affairs Were The Nail In The Coffin For Priscilla Marriage

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Elvis Presley's relationship history has plenty of overlap. Throughout the '60s and early '70s, the King of Rock and Roll is said to have romanced actors Connie Stevens, Anne Helm, Ann-Margret, and Peggy Lipton. The problem? Elvis was in a relationship with Priscilla Presley during that timeframe. In her book "Elvis and Me," Priscilla describes her reaction to reading a tabloid report about Elvis and Ann-Margret: "I picked up a flower vase and hurled it across the room, shattering it against the wall." Priscilla later learned that Elvis wasn't just cheating on her with celebrities.

While Elvis and Priscilla didn't wed until 1967, they met in 1959 and had been living together at Graceland since 1963. In 1969, when Elvis began his famous Las Vegas residency, he and Priscilla still maintained a home in Palm Springs, Florida. That's when Priscilla learned the full extent of Elvis' infidelities. "I'm reading the mail, and the things that I was reading, I really disapproved of and didn't like," she said on "Today" in September 2025. Priscilla realized her husband had a completely different life apart from her. "He would come home great and wonderful and was still a good husband, but it was just too many of us," she said.

Priscilla was willing to put up with a lot in those years, but it all became just too much. "I tried to turn my back to that, but I just didn't want to share him," she said on Australia's 7News in 2018. It took her some time, but she told Elvis she was leaving in 1972. "I finally realized that things were not going to change — and that we had separate lives completely," she told the Ladies' Home Journal in 1973. She still loved Elvis, but that life stopped working for her. 

Priscilla Presley was just 14 when she met Elvis Presley, who was 10 years older than her. By the time she moved into Graceland, she was still in high school. She had known no other life outside of Elvis. Amid his infidelities, Priscilla realized he had a world of experience while she had none. "My life was his life. He had to be happy. My problems were secondary. I want to grow. I want to do things," she told People in 1978. While still married to Elvis, Priscilla started an affair with her karate instructor, Mike Stone (seen above with Priscilla in 1975).

Priscilla took up the martial art after reading the letters from his lovers in an attempt to impress Elvis. But when her friendship with Stone began to morph into something else, she used the opportunity to explore a side of herself she had never tapped into. "If Elvis was having affairs that were none of my business, then it was none of his business what I was doing," she wrote in her 2025 memoir, "Softly, As I Leave You: Life After Elvis."

After years of feeling less-than in her marriage, Priscilla couldn't resist the attention. "The affair itself was wrong, of course. ... But as a young woman experiencing the exhilaration of being desired again, I fell headlong into the relationship," she continued. Priscilla never stopped loving Elvis, but she also didn't regret leaving. She simply needed to experience life. "I left because ... I needed to find out what the world was like," she told "Loose Women" in 2016.