On October 9, 1973, Elvis and Priscilla Presley entered a courthouse in Santa Monica as husband and wife.
A short time later, they walked back outside legally divorced.
But instead of leaving separately or turning away from each other, Elvis and Priscilla did something few people expected.
They walked out together, holding hands.
The photographs from that afternoon remain some of the most striking images from their entire relationship. Elvis wore dark sunglasses while Priscilla stayed close beside him. Los Angeles Times photographer George Fry captured the pair after the hearing and later remembered them coming down the hallway smiling and showing affection toward each other.
Their divorce marked the official end of a marriage that had begun more than six years earlier.
Elvis and Priscilla married in Las Vegas on May 1, 1967, and their daughter Lisa Marie was born the following year. By 1972, however, the couple had separated, and their divorce was finalized the following October.
Elvis and Priscilla Leaving Court After Their Divorce
What happened outside the courthouse told a very different story from the bitter celebrity breakups people might expect.
The Los Angeles Times reported that Elvis and Priscilla emerged arm in arm, and Elvis gave his former wife a friendly kiss before they left. Fry had been tipped off that the couple would be appearing in court and ended up capturing the remarkable photographs almost entirely alone.
Some surviving images also show the pair holding hands as they left the Santa Monica courthouse.
Their marriage was finished, but their connection clearly was not.
Priscilla later described Elvis as remaining an important part of her life after the separation. She wrote that during his final years they had developed a friendship in which they could acknowledge mistakes from their marriage and even laugh about some of them.
That helps explain why the courthouse photographs still stand out more than five decades later.
They do not look like two people desperate to escape each other.
They show two people ending one chapter of their relationship while apparently refusing to erase everything that had come before it.
Their lives would continue separately, but Elvis and Priscilla remained connected through Lisa Marie and through a complicated history neither could simply leave behind.
And that is what made October 9, 1973 so unusual.
Elvis Presley walked into court married to Priscilla.
He walked out divorced.
Yet one of the first things they did as former husband and wife was reach for each other’s hand.