Riley Keough Reflects on Mom Lisa Marie Presley's Marriage to Michael Jackson: 'Their Love for One Another Was Genuine'

Riley Keough is reflecting on her late mom Lisa Marie Presley’s brief but passionate marriage to Michael Jackson.

The “Billie Jean” singer was Keough’s stepfather from the time he married Presley in May 1994 to their divorce in August 1996. In a new interview on the Call Her Daddy podcast, the Daisy Jones & the Six star, 35, said their romance was true love.

“The one thing I know is that they were in love and that their love for one another was genuine,” she told host Alex Cooper. “Because I was there and I remember. Everything else I don’t know because I wasn’t there for.”

Keough added that despite Jackson’s massive fame, life at home didn’t necessarily get any more hectic when the Grammy winner came into the picture — instead, her world “got bigger.”

Related: Lisa Marie Presley Book Reveals Michael Jackson Was 'Still a Virgin' at 35 When They Dated: 'I Was Terrified'

“Our life wasn’t crazier because that already existed.. But I think when [Presley] saw Michael’s life, there were things that he had that she didn’t have,” Keough recalled. “Like, she didn’t have a plane at the time, things like that… And so our life in that way kind of got bigger. Because before that, she was with my dad and their life was very simple… Like, she didn’t have 10 million assistants and she didn’t need all of that. And I think that changed.”

Presley married the actress's father Danny Keough in 1988, and revealed in her posthumous memoir From Here to the Great Unknown, which was published in October with her daughter’s help, that she left him for Jackson after the star professed his love on a trip to Las Vegas.

“Michael said,’ I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m completely in love with you. I want us to get married and for you to have my children,’” Presley wrote in her memoir. “I didn’t say anything immediately, but then I said, ‘I’m really flattered, I can’t even talk.’ By then, I felt I was in love with him too.”

Keough said on Call Her Daddy that the intense scrutiny on her mom’s new marriage often led to them having to shut down stores for privacy, and recalled a trip to London in which she and her younger brother Benjamin — who died in 2020 — had a toy store to themselves.

The actress — who also revealed that she and her brother “had no awareness” of the sexual abuse allegations plaguing Jackson — added that when Presley ended relationships, including her marriage to Jackson, it would greatly upset her.

Related: Riley Keough Explains Why She Parents Daughter Tupelo, 2, Differently Than How Her Mom Lisa Marie Presley Parented Her

“When she would break up with people, Michael, her other partners, I would cry,” Keough recalled. “I’d get mad at her. I was really upset… I’d be pissed, not knowing what happened.”

Presley died in January 2023 at age 54 of a small bowel obstruction, while Jackson died of cardiac arrest in 2009 at age 50.

Presley praised the star in From Here to the Great Unknown as a “great conversationalist” who was “super interested in people and could really lift them up.” She also revealed that he was a virgin when they first got together.

“There was something about him that was truly remarkable, something I’ve never, ever seen in my entire life, except my dad [Elvis Presley],” she wrote. “I fell in love with him because he was normal.”

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