Riley Keough Talks Mom Lisa Marie Presley’s Marriage Michael Jackson: ‘They Were in Love’

Riley Keough is opening up about her mom Lisa Marie Presley’s high-profile marriage to Michael Jackson.

The actress sat down with Alex Cooper for the latest episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast, where she spoke of the late stars’ “genuine” love for each other.

Lisa Marie and Michael were married from 1994 to 1996, and Keough said, “The one thing I know is that they were in love and that their love for one another was genuine. Because I was there and I remember. Everything else I don’t know because I wasn’t there for.”

When MJ came into their lives, Riley said, “Our life wasn’t crazier because that already existed... But I think when [my mom] saw Michael’s life, there were things that he had that she didn’t have. 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 [Danny Keough] 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.”

Keough added that she had “had no awareness” of Michael’s legal battles, and that she was sad when Lisa Marie and Jackson broke up.

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

Presley, 54, died from a small bowel obstruction in January 2023, and Jackson, 50, died in 2009 after suffering a cardiac arrest.

Lisa Marie got candid about Michael in her memoir “From Here to the Great Unknown,” which Riley helped finish after her death.

Presley explained she was still married to Danny Keough at the time Michael professed his love to her on a Las Vegas trip, and she divorced Keough soon after.

She recalled, “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.’ 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.”

Presley revealed Michael, who was 35 at the time, was a virgin.

“He told me he was still a virgin,” she wrote. “I think he had kissed Tatum O’Neal, and he’d had a thing with Brooke Shields, which hadn’t been physical apart from a kiss. He said Madonna had tried to hook up with him once, too, but nothing happened.”

She went on, “I was terrified, because I didn’t want to make the wrong move. When he decided to first kiss me, he just did it. He was instigating everything. They physical stuff started happening, which I was shocked at. I had thought that maybe we wouldn’t do anything until we got married, but he said, ‘I’m not waiting!’”

It was a happy time for the pair, and she gushed, “I was actually so happy. I’ve never been that happy again.”

They wed in 1994, just 20 days after her divorce from Danny.

Initially, they had a strong connection. Presley called him an “amazing conversationalist” and “truly remarkable,” sharing, “I’ve never ever seen or felt [that] in my entire life, other than with my dad [Elvis Presley]. I feel really, really lucky that he let me in.”

Presley added, “I fell in love with him because he was normal, just f**king normal. His normal was a side that no one saw.”

Eventually, the short-lived romance started to unravel and Lisa Marie suspected he was using drugs.

When she pressed to find out what was going on with the doctor he was seeing in NYC, Jackson told her to go back to California.

She shared, “So I left. I wanted him to come too, but he didn’t. I filed for divorce very shortly, thereafter.”

The relationship didn’t end there. Riley wrote in the book that they continued to visit Jackson’s Neverland ranch, and her mom kept hooking up with Michael.

In addition to her marriages to Danny and Michael, Lisa Marie was also married to Nicolas Cage from 2002 to 2004 and Michael Lockwood from 2006 to 2021.