Graceland is full of rooms fans know by heart. People line up to walk through Elvis’s Memphis home and see where the King of Rock n’ Roll lived with his family.
So you might think Elvis’s daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, had a favorite room somewhere inside. Her old bedroom, maybe. Or her daddy’s den.
The answer came from the person who knows that house better than almost anyone. Angie Marchese is Graceland’s Vice President of Archives, so the history of the place is her everyday work.
During a virtual tour of Graceland, Marchese shared where Lisa Marie liked to be. And it wasn’t in one of the big showpiece rooms at all.
It helps to know a little about the back of the house first. In the mid-1960s Elvis enlarged Graceland and built a den that fans now call the Jungle Room. It even has an indoor waterfall made of cut field stone. Behind the mansion there’s a horse stable that the home’s original owners added back in 1939. Elvis kept many horses there, and horses still live in the stables today.
Marchese has also talked about how carefully the house is kept for the family. “I have never seen any of the family play the pianos,” she said. “But we keep them tuned and clean to preserve them as instruments if they want to.”
In 2012, Lisa Marie walked Entertainment Tonight’s cameras through Graceland herself, and it’s a rare chance to see her dad’s house through the eyes of Elvis’s own daughter.
Lisa Marie Presley shows Entertainment Tonight around Graceland in 2012
Here’s the spot. According to Marchese, Lisa Marie liked to sit in the little porch area just outside the Jungle Room.
From there you look out toward the horse stables. It’s a calm view, the kind of seat where you could just sit for a while and watch the horses.
That alone would make a nice story. But Marchese added a sweet family twist. The same porch was where Lisa Marie’s great-grandmother, Minnie Mae Presley, liked to relax, because of that view of the stables.
Minnie Mae was Vernon Presley’s mother, which made her Elvis’s grandmother. Elvis gave her the nickname “Dodger,” and she lived at Graceland with the family.
So two Presley women, born generations apart, picked the very same quiet seat out back. It was a plain little porch with the horses in view, and that was enough for both of them.
The spot is still there, and fans on the Graceland tour can see the area. If you’ve taken the tour, there’s a good chance you walked right past it without knowing whose favorite seat it was.
Next time, slow down out back and look toward the stables. Somewhere by the Jungle Room is the porch where Lisa Marie and her great-grandmother both liked to sit.