Priscilla Presley was married to Elvis, and the two of them had one child together, a daughter named Lisa Marie. She was Elvis’s only child, and she grew up carrying one of the most famous last names in the world.
And little Lisa knew it.
Priscilla has been sharing stories about those early years again lately, at a couple of public appearances, and one of the sweetest is about the day she had to sit her young daughter down for a talk. The problem wasn’t that Lisa Marie was shy. It was the opposite. The little girl kept telling people exactly who her daddy was, to anyone who would listen.
Priscilla told one version of the story on stage in New York, at a well-known talk series called the 92nd Street Y. Someone in the crowd asked whether Lisa Marie ever wished she had a different name, something a little less famous. Priscilla didn’t hesitate.
Here’s Priscilla, warm and funny, remembering her daughter as a girl.
Priscilla looks back on Lisa Marie, on stage in New York
“No, she loved her name,” Priscilla said. Then she slipped into Lisa’s little-girl voice and gave the line her daughter used to use on people: “You know, I’m Lisa Presley. Do you know who my dad is?”
The room laughed. “She knew she had a good name,” Priscilla added.
She told it a bit differently a few days earlier, sitting down for a long interview with CBS Sunday Morning. In that telling, Lisa Marie was just a little girl, around six or seven, and Priscilla worried she was leaning on the family name too much. So she pulled her aside.
“I said to Lisa, ‘You can’t be telling people that you’re Elvis’ daughter,'” Priscilla recalled, before adding, “mind you she’s only 6 or 7 years old.”
That’s where the cheeky part comes in, and it’s worth hearing Priscilla tell it herself.
Priscilla’s full sit-down interview about her life and family
Lisa Marie looked right back at her mother and said, “Why not? It’s true.”
You can’t really argue with that. Priscilla, bless her, tried anyway. She told her little girl she had a great personality all her own and didn’t need to lead with her father’s name. “I just said, ‘You know Lisa, let other people find out for themselves that you’re his daughter,'” she remembered.
Priscilla has told the story with slightly different ages over the years, so nobody should get hung up on whether Lisa was six or ten. The heart of it is the same either way. A small girl, proud as can be, who saw no reason on earth to hide the best thing she knew about herself.
It’s a tiny moment, but it says a lot about the bond between a famous father and the daughter who adored him. Watch Priscilla’s face as she tells it. That’s a mom remembering a kid who knew her own mind early.