Donna Presley spent her summers at Graceland, and she didn’t spend them lounging around.
She worked in the Graceland office with her uncle Vernon, Elvis’s father, helping answer the fan mail that poured in for her famous cousin. Donna is Elvis’s first cousin. Her mother, Nash Presley Pritchett, was Vernon’s youngest sister, which made Donna Vernon’s niece and gave her a place in the family’s Graceland summers.
That’s how she came to be in the right place for a conversation she has never forgotten.
Shortly before Donna graduated from high school, during one of her many stays at Graceland, Elvis gave her some advice about life. As Donna tells it, he laid out four principles for success, and she has carried them with her ever since.
She’s 76 now, according to Robb Report Malaysia, and she still shares those principles with the crowds who come to hear her talk about Elvis. Donna also has her own official YouTube channel, and its welcome video is a nice way to meet her before you hear what Elvis said.
Donna Presley’s welcome video on her official channel
So what did he tell her?
In Donna’s telling, the four rules were faith in God, faith in yourself, hard work and never letting other people shrink your dreams.
It’s that last one she quotes word for word. As Donna remembers it, Elvis told her: “Never let anyone tell you that you cannot accomplish your dreams because I’m living proof that you can.”
Consider who was saying it. This was Elvis Presley, talking to his teenage cousin at Graceland and pointing to his own life as the example, and it is easy to see why the line stuck.
Donna shared the memory with the magazine Robb Report Malaysia during her first visit to Asia earlier this year. While she was there she held an evening called “Donna Presley: From My Heart” at The Majestic Hotel Kuala Lumpur. She said she wanted to “share personal stories of Elvis and our family life at home.”
She is also working with a Malaysian charity called Seeds of Hope toward a music and learning space for children in need.
Donna has been telling family stories for a long time. In 1987 she and her mother wrote a book of memories together called “One Flower While I Live: Elvis As I Remember Him.” It was reprinted a few years ago with new stories from Donna. These days she also chairs the advisory board of the Mississippi Music Foundation, so music is still a big part of her life.
What comes through in all of it is how personal Elvis is to her. He was the cousin who took her seriously when she was a teenager about to step out into the world, and she has spent years passing his words along to people who never got to meet him.
The video below isn’t the talk where she shares this advice, but it’s a chance to hear Donna in her own voice as she talks about her famous cousin.
Donna Presley talking about her cousin Elvis
For Donna, keeping his memory alive isn’t a side project. As she told Robb Report Malaysia, “It’s not just a tribute, it’s a way of life.”