Inside Lisa Marie Presley’s marriages with Nicolas Cage and Michael Jackson

Lisa Marie Presley, the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, was married four times and engaged on five occasions before she died Thursday.

The singer, who was 54, dated several men in Hollywood over the years and had whirlwind romances with both Michael Jackson and Nicholas Cage.

She first tied the knot with actor Danny Keough in October 1988 when she was just 20 years old. A year later, the pair had a daughter, Riley Keough and in 1992 they welcomed a son, Benjamin Keough.

They divorced two years later in 1994. In July 2020, Benjamin took his own life at 27 years old.

“‘He’s my absolute best friend in the world,” Presley said of her ex-husband in a 2003 interview with Rolling Stone. “The smartest thing I’ve ever done is have children with this man, because I knew this is the one man I could be connected to for the rest of my life.”

The pair remained lifelong friends and Presley said getting married so young had affected their relationship. She had moved in with Keough when she was just 17 years old and said he had struggled with her stardom, according to an interview she did with Marie Claire magazine in 2007.

“I had been really sheltered. I got married the first time very, very young. And the marriage I was in, there was so much resentment about who I was, because I had more than he did, and it became a power struggle,” she said.

Less than three weeks after her divorce to Danny Keough was finalized, Presley wed Jackson in a secret ceremony in the Dominican Republic.

“It is hard for a man to be with a woman who is stronger, wealthier,” she said of her switch from Keough to Jackson. “So in my mind I’m thinking, I know, I’ll get with someone more compatible. I wasn’t thinking what everyone else was thinking, which was that I must have been out of my fucking mind.”

At the time of her wedding to Jackson, Presley said she was “in love.”

“I am very much in love with Michael, I dedicate my life to being his wife,” Presley said in a statement. “I understand and support him. We both look forward to raising a family.”

However, the famous duo never had any children and called it quits after just two years of marriage.

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Lisa Marie Presley 1968-2023

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She called marrying Jackson the “biggest mistake of her life” in the same Marie Claire interview.

“My biggest mistake? Let’s see,” she said in response to the reporter’s question. “How can I word this? Um. Well. Leaving my first marriage, for the person that I left it for — that was probably the biggest mistake of my life.”

Following Jackson’s death in 2009, however, Presley penned a blog post stating she “failed to help” him through his substance abuse problems and added that their short-lived relationship was real and “not ‘a sham’.”

“I wanted to save him from the inevitable which is what has just happened,” she wrote. “His family and his loved ones also wanted to save him from this as well but didn’t know how and this was 14 years ago. We all worried that this would be the outcome then. 

In 2002, Presley wed another famous A-lister, Cage. The couple reportedly met while she was engaged to the musician John Oszajca — who proposed in 1999 — while Cage was still married to Patricia Arquette.

Cage told Barbara Walters in 2003 that he met Presley at a party and “was thunderstruck” by her.

“I walk into a party not knowing who I’m going to meet and there’s this beautiful girl standing in the middle of the living room wearing this short leather skirt and this fluffy jacket, and she looks up at me with these big, beautiful, soulful eyes, eyes that look like they have a sad story to tell, and I just went ‘Oh,’” Cage said.

They married in a ceremony in August 2002, but ended their relationship after only four months. They finalized their divorce in 2004.

“Marrying him was a wild flurry, a crazy idea and being young, and ‘Ahhhh!’” Presley said of Cage in 2007.

At the time of their divorce, she said they should have never married.

“I’m sad about this, but we shouldn’t have been married in the first place. It was a big mistake,” she said in a statement.

Presley’s fourth and final marriage was to guitarist Michael Lockwood in 2006. The couple exchanged vows in Japan with her first husband Keough serving as the best man.

Presley and Lockwood were married for 10 years and shared twin daughters Harper Vivienne Ann and Finley Aaron Love, whom Presley had in 2008.

While pregnant with his children, Presley told Marie Claire that Lockwood was her best friend.

“I’ve gotten to the point in my life where I’ve chased all the crazies down,” she told the publication. “I was ready to stop the madness. At this age, I really appreciate having [a husband who is] a best friend. But you know, the other guys were fun. For a while.”

Presley filed for divorce from Lockwood in 2016 and after a messy court and custody battle, their divorce was finalized in 2021.

Presely died in the hospital after suffering cardiac arrest at her Calabasas home. She is survived by her mother Priscilla Presley and children, Riley Keough, Finley Lockwood and Harper Lockwood.