Elvis Presley’s first-born granddaughter, Riley Keough, shared an intimate look at life inside Graceland in Memphis, where her late mother, Lisa Marie Presley, spent part of her childhood.
Keough, the sole heir of the famous estate, learned some new details about her family while parsing through hours of audio recordings her mother — the only daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley — made while working on her memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown.” Keough fulfilled her mother’s wishes and finished co-writing the book after her death at age 54 in January 2023. The memoir was just named Winfrey’s 108th book club pick.
In an exclusive special with Oprah Winfrey that aired Tuesday night, Keough shared her mother’s last recorded words, discussed the impact of Elvis on her family and more.
“I think that in the book she absolutely reveals a part of herself,” Keough told Winfrey during “An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley,” produced by Harpo Productions.
Here are some highlights from the hour-long special.
Keough says hearing mom’s last words was “very intense”
Months before she died, Lisa Marie asked Keough to help her finish her memoir.
“She was incredibly insecure and I think there were moments where she kind of was going, ‘Why am I even writing a book about myself?’ She didn’t like talking about herself particularly,” Keough told Winfrey.
While she struggled to share private details about her life, Keough said her mom felt compelled to tell her story in hopes of connecting with people and sending a message in a “hopeful kind of way,” especially after her son Benjamin Keough’s death by suicide in 2020.
In the recordings, Lisa Marie described Graceland as a vortex with no rules, and said she was “mostly up to mischief” and a “true wild child.”
As an adult, Lisa Marie would often return to the property to feel her father’s presence.
“Trying to grieve my father; it’s still there if I go there. I don’t necessarily cry, but I still feel all of the energy that’s there. It’s just still there,” Lisa Marie is heard saying in an audio recording.
In a way, Keough said it was a “beautiful blessing” to hear some of her mother’s last words on tape, but she also described listening to them as “very intense.”
“It was just such a strange experience because, after 30 minutes of it, it feels very much like she’s there,” Keough said.
Keough said her mom was a “self-proclaimed daddy’s girl.”
“I feel so honored that I got to spend any time with him at all,” Lisa Marie said in a recording. Elvis died at 42 years old in 1977, when Lisa Marie was just 9 years old.
Lisa Marie’s last exchange with Elvis before his death
Keough showed Winfrey the last place Lisa Marie and Elvis spoke to each other: the back entrance leading to the patio of Graceland. He was heading in from racquetball and she was heading out to ride her golf cart.
The morning of Elvis’ death, on August 16, 1977, Keough said her mom woke up and instinctively knew something was wrong.
Keough said the memoir is the first time Lisa Marie has ever talked in detail about that day.
“And she said good night to him and I think she knew saying good night, like she had some kind of a sense. I think she had a sense many times that he wasn’t okay, you know?” Keough explained. “She would tell me that, you know, sometimes she would find him in his bathroom looking kind of out of it or holding onto the railing to, you know, stand up straight. And she also wrote these letters when she was little that we have, kind of saying, I hope my daddy doesn’t die. So there was some kind of sense there.”
Lisa Marie describes watching thousands of mourning fans file into the house to pay tribute to her father, dubbed the “King of Rock and Roll.”
In her memoir, she described being “so busy looking at everyone else’s grief” that she struggled with her own. After everyone was gone at night, Lisa Marie would go downstairs to view her dad’s body.
“I went down to where he was lying in the casket, just to be with him, to touch his face and hold his hand, to talk to him. I asked him, ‘Why is this happening? Why are you doing this?'” Lisa Marie wrote in her memoir.
Inside Lisa Marie and Michael Jackson’s relationship
After divorcing Danny Keough, the father of Riley and Ben Keough, Lisa Marie made waves when she announced she and Michael Jackson tied the knot in 1994. The marriage lasted two years. At the time, Keough recalls nicknaming Jackson “Mimi.”
“I remember how much she loved [Michael Jackson]. She really was, like, obsessed with him,” Keough said.
Lisa Marie spoke about her adoration for Jackson in the audio recordings, saying that he always made sure to pay attention to others and ensure they felt heard.
“He’d be really, really interested and fascinated by everything you had to say about what you did. So he would lift people up. I watched him do it all the time. It was amazing. Ya know, he did it with me,” Lisa Marie said of Jackson.
Keough described the couple as having a “very seemingly happy, loving relationship.” The pair often stayed at Lisa Marie’s house instead of Jackson’s Neverland to create a sense of normalcy for the family – getting ready and taking the kids to school together.
Lisa Marie later briefly married Nicholas Cage in 2002. Then she married Michael Lockwood from 2006 through 2021. They have twin girls, Harper and Finley, who just turned 16.
Keough describes “unbearably dark” time for family
Keough said her mom was a rebellious teenager, but she didn’t believe she had a “proverbial drug problem.”
It wasn’t until she was around 40 years old when she delivered her twin girls in 2008 via a C-section that she had her first taste of opioids. At one point, she was taking dozens of pills a day, according to the book.
“She would pull me aside and said, ‘I’m — I’ve been taking opiates. And at first, I was taking them for pain. Then I was taking them to sleep at night. Now it’s like I’m taking them for fun,” Keough recalled.
Eventually, she went to rehab but later returned to the pills.
The drug abuse spiraled into chaos and Keough said her mom and the twins had to move in with her in Nashville. Her dad, Danny Keough, also moved in to help.
In the book, Keough wrote, “It seemed like it could have been good to have everyone together. But it felt like the end of things. We’d had this amazing, colorful, beautiful, abundant, fun, joyful life – but in that house, it took a turn and got unbearably dark for all of us.”
At that time, Keough realized that rehab may not work and that Lisa Marie’s issues were likely deeper than some accidental drug problem. Keough often would find her mom tearing up as she listened to Elvis’ songs while alone and drunk.
Lisa Marie says son was “so much like [Elvis] it scared me”
Winfrey recalled Lisa Marie telling her she didn’t know if she’d make it after her son’s suicide in 2020. Throughout his life, he struggled with drugs and alcohol.
“I knew this was the end of her. You know?” Keough admitted. “I just couldn’t imagine a world where she would make it without him.”
In her memoir, Lisa Marie wrote about her close relationship with her son.
“Ben was very similar to his grandfather, very, very, very, and in every way. He even looked like him. Ben was so much like him, it scared me. I didn’t want to tell him because I thought it was too much to put on a kid. We were very close. He’d tell me everything. Ben and I had the same relationship that my father and his mother had. It was a generational f-–ing cycle. Gladys loved my dad so much that she drank herself to death worrying about him. Ben didn’t stand a f-–ing chance,” wrote Lisa Marie.
After Ben’s death, Lisa Marie and Keough went through his phone, where they discovered a message from him expressing that he felt he had a mental health issue. That surprised Keough. She knew that he liked to party and “go on these benders,” but she didn’t peg him as depressed.
Winfrey said “one of the most shocking things” shared in the book was how Lisa Marie grieved Ben by bringing his coffin into the home for about two months.
Keough said her mom found a very compassionate funeral homeowner who explained how she could keep the casket with her until she was ready for the burial. She had dry ice brought in regularly as part of that preservation process. And she would often just sit with his body.
Lisa Marie was buried next to Ben in the meditation garden at Graceland, where Elvis was also laid to rest.
Keough said she was concerned about Lisa Marie weeks before her death.
“I think there was always sort of an undertone for me because of this feeling that I felt that I was on borrowed time with her,” Keough said.
Mother-son matching tattoos
Before she said her final goodbye and buried Ben, Lisa Marie wanted to fulfill a final wish: to get a matching tattoo with her son.
“I think that the story could — on paper, I can see how this sounds completely insane and absurd. But I — my mom was just very much herself. And I — I don’t know if you knew her. There’s nothing — you know, she wasn’t a crazy lady,” Keough stated before starting the story.
Lisa Marie brought in a tattoo artist to write Ben’s name on her hand. To get the placement exactly right, she brought the artist into the room and opened Ben’s coffin to show him his hand.
“[The tattoo artist], God bless him, was very normal about the whole thing,” Keough said, calling it “definitely one of the most, like, absurd moments.”
She recalls her mom opening up the casket and the tattoo artist studying the placement and going back and redoing it for her.
“When he left I was, like, ‘Do you know how f—ing crazy that was, what you just did?” Keough asked her mom, joking with Winfrey that the tattoo artist would probably write a book about it at some point.
Graceland’s future and a powerful lesson learned
Keough, an actress who starred in “Daisy Jones and the Six,” says she plans to continue running the beloved Graceland property – which more than 2,000 people tour daily.
“I think, like, my instinct with everything is always to do what my mother would have wanted. Which is to keep it a home. It was our family’s home,” Keough said.
Keough said she had plenty of tough times with her mom – but the love was always there. And that’s something she hopes to pass along to her 2-year-old daughter, Tupelo.
“I think that if I can just make [Tupelo] feel loved the way my mom made us feel loved. It was unconditional. Truly,” she said.
Keough added, “She did things — we had fights. She did things that I, you know, did not approve of. We’d have awful interactions, as you do with someone on drugs. But … the love was always there, you know?”
If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or a suicidal crisis, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. You can also chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline here.
For more information about mental health care resources and support, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–10 p.m. ET, at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or email info@nami.org.
