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Priscilla Presley’s brief romance with Robert Kardashian is back in the news thanks to her new memoir.
In Softly as I Leave You: Life After Elvis, which is out September 23, Priscilla opens up about her time with Robert, whom she dated after her divorce from Elvis Presley. The two were a couple for about a year in the mid-’70s.
Priscilla Presley calls Robert Kardashian ‘a sweet man’
“Robert was a sweet man, and I liked him,” Priscilla writes in her latest book (via People). But she was put off by his demanding career as a lawyer. And she still wasn’t fully over her relationship with Elvis. Though Kardashian wanted to tie the knot, she demurred.
“Robert wanted to get married, but I knew it wouldn’t work. I wasn’t ready to marry again,” she explained.
While Priscilla was still emotionally entangled with The King, Kardashian’s ex — and future wife — Kris Jenner was still pining for her former boyfriend, whom she’d met when she was just 17 and engaged to another man.
After Kris and Robert split, a friend introduced the lawyer to Priscilla. The two were “instantly smitten” with each other, Jenner admitted in her 2011 memoir, Kris Jenner … And All Things Kardashian.
Kris Jenner admitted she was jealous of Priscilla Presley
Kris had embarked on a career as a flight attendant after her split from Robert. But he was still very much on her mind.
“I was living in a flight attendants’ dormitory in Fort Worth, bummed that Kardashian was going to end up with Priscilla Presley,” Kris shared. “She was gorgeous, of course, petite and perfect and beautiful and famous. I would see pictures of her and just die. Any woman would be thrilled to look like Priscilla Presley.”
The future Keeping Up With the Kardashians star might have thought she couldn’t compete with Priscilla. But Robert definitely couldn’t compete with Elvis. While he and Priscilla were no longer married, he had trouble with the idea of letting her go.
In her new book, Priscilla recalls a time when she received a late-night phone call from her former husband while she was in bed with Kardashian.
“It hadn’t crossed [Elvis’] mind that I might have been asleep. It had certainly never occurred to him that I might be with another man,” Presley writes. “Despite our divorce, he still couldn’t wrap his head around my being with someone else.”
If Elvis had discovered the truth, he wouldn’t have taken the news well.
“He’d have gone ballistic, maybe literally, if he’d known Robert was in my bedroom,” Priscilla wrote. “Elvis always carried a loaded gun, sometimes more than one.”
Despite their breakup, there were apparently no hard feelings between Priscilla and Kardashian. When Elvis died in 1977, her ex reached out to check on her. And when Kardashian was dying of cancer in 2003, Kris explained in her memoir that she “facilitated” a call between him and his former girlfriend so that “Priscilla was able to say goodbye.”
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