Riley Keough is Elvis Presley’s granddaughter. Her mom was Lisa Marie Presley, Elvis’s only child, and Riley has made a name of her own as an actress.
But when Riley talks about love, her story doesn’t start in Memphis or Hollywood. It starts on a movie set in Namibia, in southern Africa.
She was there filming “Mad Max: Fury Road,” the big action movie, when she met an Australian stuntman named Ben Smith-Petersen. “We shot Mad Max: Fury Road in Namibia, which is where I met Ben. He was on the stunt crew,” she told Vogue.
A year later, they crossed paths again during reshoots in Sydney. Vogue says Riley came to Australia for a month in December 2013 “and left with her soulmate.” Riley put it her own way: “I really did fall in love with my husband and also Australia in the same couple of weeks.”
She’s still grateful for that movie. She later told SiriusXM’s “The Jess Cagle Show” that “of course, I met my husband, so it was like extra life-changing.” If you’d like to hear how it all began from Riley herself, this SiriusXM clip has her telling the story of meeting Ben on the set.
Riley tells how she met her husband making “Mad Max”
On Feb. 4, 2015, Riley and Ben got married at Calistoga Ranch in California’s Napa Valley. Lisa Marie was there as mother of the bride, and one of Riley’s little twin sisters was a flower girl.
That’s the wedding most fans know about.
But Riley says it wasn’t really their first.
“Technically, our first wedding was in Nepal, because we were there building a school a couple of weeks before we got married,” she told Vogue.
So a couple of weeks before the big day in California, the two of them were halfway around the world, helping put up a school. The local families they met there found out the couple was about to tie the knot, and they wanted to be part of it.
“The families knew we were getting married and they said, ‘Let us throw you a Hindu wedding.'”
Photos from that day show Riley in a deep red dress with a flower necklace and Ben wearing a yellow garland. It was a gift from the local families, and Riley clearly never forgot it.
And that’s the one that got to her. “That wedding, I cried,” Riley said.
The California wedding was the grand one, with her family there. Yet Riley admits her nerves got the better of her that day. “At my bigger wedding I was a little nervous, I wasn’t as present.”
Riley has never been shy about her husband. When she visited Conan O’Brien’s late-night show in 2017, she chatted with him about Ben and the movie where they met, and it’s a fun few minutes.
Riley talks about her husband with Conan O’Brien
Riley and Ben have built a family together since then, and their daughter, Tupelo Storm, was born in 2022.
A fan has gathered pictures from that February day in Napa, so you can see Riley as a bride with the people she loves around her.
Photos from Riley’s wedding day in Napa Valley
Plenty of brides say their wedding went by in a blur. Riley just happens to have a second one to compare it with.
The big California day had the ranch and her mom by her side. But the wedding that brought the tears was the one those families threw for two visitors who’d come to help build a school.