Riley Keough knows a thing or two about growing up in a famous family. The actress is the oldest child of Lisa Marie Presley, which makes her Elvis Presley’s granddaughter.
And now she’s a mom herself.
Riley’s daughter is named Tupelo Storm, a name that honors Tupelo, Mississippi, the town where Elvis was born. People magazine reported in December 2025 that Riley and her husband, Ben Smith-Petersen, had a second child in early 2025, which Priscilla Presley confirmed that September.
So what does Elvis’s granddaughter want for her own kids? She talked about it on Alex Cooper’s podcast, “Call Her Daddy,” and Good Morning America reported her words in January 2025.
To understand her answer, you have to understand the kind of childhood the Presleys like to give.
Elvis loved to treat Lisa Marie to big, amazing surprises. Fans still talk about him closing the Libertyland amusement park just for his little girl.
Lisa Marie grew up and carried that same spirit into raising her own children. Riley has called her family’s way with kids “really loving and tactile and smothering.” She added two more words to that list: “no boundaries.” She said that in a November 2024 talk with the author Taylor Jenkins Reid.
On the podcast, Riley made it very clear how she sees her mom.
“I think she was such an amazing parent and she wanted us to have” … “I think her father did” … “these amazing experiences all the time,” Riley said.
In other words, Lisa Marie was doing for her kids what Elvis had done for her.
Riley loves her for it. But as a mom, she’s thought hard about one thing.
“For me personally, I think that the problem there could be for some that when you’re used to so much,” she explained, “it’s hard to find joy in simple things.”
That leads to the one thing she’d change.
Here’s how Riley put it: “And so I really want my children to be able to find joy and just playing in the backyard and doing normal kid stuff”.
She wants them to be happy that way “and not need like elephants and circus and all these things all the time,” in her words.
Elephants and circus. You won’t find those on most party checklists, and Riley wasn’t saying her mom actually brought in elephants. She was using it as a picture of how big things could get in her family when a parent wanted to make a child happy.
“So that’s probably what I would do differently,” she said.
Then, just so nobody got the wrong idea, she added something about her mom. “But I think her intention was really wanting to give everything she could to her kids.”
It’s a lovely way to put it. Riley clearly treasures what her mom gave her, and she’d like her own children to get just as excited about a backyard.
Riley has shared some sweet family moments over the years. In this clip she talks about her daughter’s name and the nod to her famous grandfather behind it.
Riley Keough explains her daughter’s name and the link to Elvis
So the big Presley love keeps getting passed down, from Elvis to Lisa Marie and on to Riley. The difference is that Riley’s kids may end up remembering a lazy afternoon in the backyard as fondly as anything with an elephant in it.