Not many people can say they had two Kings in their family. Riley Keough can.
Her grandfather was Elvis Presley. And when she was a little girl, her mother Lisa Marie married Michael Jackson. Riley was only about five when Michael came into her life, and the marriage lasted from 1994 to 1996.
She never got to know her grandfather. Elvis was gone years before she was born in 1989. So everything she knows about him came the same way it came to the rest of us, through stories and songs and old film.
But Michael she knew up close, the way a child knows a stepdad.
For a long time Riley stayed quiet about those years. Then, in a 2023 magazine profile, she finally opened up. What she said wasn’t gossip. It was tender. “You just remember the love,” she said, “and I had real love for Michael.” Simple as that.
And then she said the thing fans keep coming back to.
Riley pointed to one trait her stepdad and her grandfather both carried, even though she only ever knew one of them in person. It had nothing to do with fame or fortune. It was something softer, something about who these men were when the music stopped.
She put it in two parts. First she described what drove Michael. She said he “really got a kick out of being able to make people happy, in the most epic way possible.” Then she tied it straight back to Elvis, calling it something “he and my grandfather had in common.”
That’s the thread between them. Two of the most famous men who ever lived, and the thing Riley holds onto is how much they both loved making other people happy.
In the clip below, Riley opens up about what life was really like with Michael as her stepdad.
Riley Keough looking back on life with Michael as her stepdad
Watch it to see Riley describe the warm, everyday side of the stepdad most people only ever read about.
She grew up around two of the most famous men in the world. And what she remembers best is the softest part of who they were.