After months of legal battles, a settlement has been reached between Riley Keough and Priscilla Presley regarding Lisa Marie Presley‘s estate, Elvis Presley‘s Graceland. Amid rumors about any contention between the two women, Keough is setting the record straight about her relationship with her grandmother.
“Things with Grandma will be happy,” Keough tells Vanity Fair.
“They’ve never not been happy. I’m trying to think of a way to answer it that’s not a 20-minute conversation,” she continues. “There was a bit of upheaval, but now everything’s going to be how it was.”
“She’s a beautiful woman, and she was a huge part of creating my grandfather’s legacy and Graceland. It’s very important to her. He was the love of her life,” Keough — one of Lisa Marie’s four children — explains. “Anything that would suggest otherwise in the press makes me sad because, at the end of the day, all she wants is to love and protect Graceland and the Presley family and the legacy. That’s her whole life.”
“So it’s a big responsibility she has tried to take on. None of that stuff has really ever been a part of our relationship prior,” she says, “She’s just been my grandma.”
Tensions seemed to rise after the death of Lisa Marie. The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s daughter died on Jan. 12, 2023 after suffering a full cardiac arrest. She was 54 years old.
“When my mom passed, there was a lot of chaos in every aspect of our lives,” Keough tells VF. “Everything felt like the carpet had been ripped out and the floor had melted from under us. Everyone was in a bit of a panic to understand how we move forward, and it just took a minute to understand the details of the situation, because it’s complicated.”
“We are a family, but there’s also a huge business side of our family. So I think that there was clarity that needed to be had.”
“Clarity has been had,” she confirms, when asked if the family had found clarity.
Weeks after Lisa Marie’s death, Priscilla raised concerns about her daughter’s estate, filing a petition questioning the validity of the will after a 2016 amendment which made Keough and her siblings sole heirs. Keough has 14-year-old half-sisters, Harper and Finley Lockwood. Her brother — Lisa Marie’s only son, Benjamin Keough — died by suicide in 2020.
Elvis’ granddaughter and former wife came to an agreement, and Keough filed a petition for approval in June 2023. A judge signed off on the settlement on Friday, Aug. 4. The ruling not only makes Keough the sole trustee of her mother’s estate, but she has also been named the sole owner of Elvis’ Graceland, which he gave to Lisa Marie when he died in 1977.
Keough has made it clear that her grandmother will be buried at Graceland in the Meditation Garden upon her passing.
“I don’t know why she wouldn’t be buried at Graceland,” she states. “I don’t understand what the drama in the news was about. Yeah. If she wants to be, of course. Sharing Graceland with the world was her idea from the start.”
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Rarely Seen Pictures of Elvis With Lisa Marie Presley
Lisa Marie Presley was nine years old when her father Elvis Presley died in 1977. This gallery of rarely seen family pictures shows how fond the rock n’ roll legend was of his little girl.