Elvis Presley Asked His On-Screen Love Interest For Advice Before Marrying Priscilla

Elvis Presley was already a music and film star when he met Priscilla Beaulieu, now Presley, in West Germany in 1959. When he returned to the U.S. in March 1960, Elvis was consumed by thoughts about whether he could possibly reconcile settling down with his high-profile career. In trying to figure it out, Elvis turned to Barbara Eden, his co-star in the 1960 Western "Flaming Star," for advice. "He said, 'I want to know how you and your husband survive this business. I'm a little worried about bringing her to the United States,'" she recalled in a 2023 interview with Fox News.

At the time, Eden was with her then-husband and fellow actor Michael Ansara, and Elvis was intrigued by how the marriage was possible given their hectic careers. The "I Dream of Jeannie" star responded as honestly as she could, though she doesn't think her answer did much to help placate Elvis' concerns. "I told him, '... As long as the two of you are a team, it will work out,' But Elvis was worried," she recalled. Back then, Priscilla was 15, while Elvis was 25. "I had no idea how young she was! He didn't tell me! Oh boy. And such a pretty, pretty girl," Eden said at Elvis Week in 2022 (via Express).

Despite his doubts, Elvis carried on with his relationship with Priscilla. In 1963, she moved to the U.S. to live with Elvis' parents and finish school, and they tied the knot in May 1967. In August 2022, Eden met Priscilla during Elvis Week at Graceland and shared the anecdote about Elvis' early worries about their relationship. "I just met her recently, and I told her the story about Elvis. She is a lovely woman and I like her a lot," she told Fox News. As valuable as her co-star's advice was, Elvis had good reason to worry.

Elvis Presley's instincts were right about his relationship with Priscilla Presley. More than half of Hollywood celebrity couples get divorced, a rate that more than doubles that of the general population, and Elvis and Priscilla proved to be the rule rather than the exception. Elvis and Priscilla finalized their divorce on October 9, 1973. As the picture (seen above) of them leaving the courthouse arm-in-arm and smiling indicates, they ended their marriage on an amicable note. 

They deeply cared for each other, but the reality of Elvis' life and stardom took a toll on Priscilla, as his comments to Barbara Eden suggest the King had predicted. Priscilla was a teenager who moved across the Atlantic to be with him, leaving her family behind. Elvis' bubble became all she knew. "He already had his inner circle, and of course, they embraced me, but I never realized that that was it," she said on the U.K. show "Loose Women" in 2016.

Because he was such a massive star, Elvis avoided public spaces to protect his privacy. That meant that Priscilla lived largely in isolation. "He didn't go out, he didn't like eating in restaurants because people would take pictures of him ... We truly lived in a bubble," she revealed. And then there was another dark facet of fame. Elvis' brazen affairs finally put the nail in the coffin for Priscilla. "He would come home great and wonderful and was still a good husband, but it was just too many of us," she told "Today" in 2025. As he feared, Elvis' career and lifestyle did, in fact, get in the way. As for Barbara Eden, her marriage to Michael Ansara ended in divorce the year after the Presleys split, and she is now in an age-gap relationship of her own.