But his military service also coincided with a period of intense personal change that ensured Presley the Army recruit wasn’t the same man as Presley the veteran. By the time he was honorably discharged, he had lost his beloved mother and met the woman who would become his wife.
The musician was very close with his parents, Gladys and Vernon Presley, who moved to Fort Hood, Texas, to be near their only son while he was stationed at the Army base there. About four months into Elvis’s service, in August 1958, Gladys became gravely ill with acute hepatitis. She returned to Memphis, Tennessee, where she was hospitalized.
Immediately, Elvis requested emergency leave to be by his mother’s side. He spent a day and a half with Gladys, but on August 14, the 46-year-old died of a heart attack. The singer was devastated in the wake of his mother’s death. At her funeral, he reportedly said: “Goodbye, Darling. Goodbye! I love you so much! I lived my whole life just for you.”
Elvis didn’t hid his grief when he talked with journalists about Gladys’s death, either. “It broke my heart,” Elvis said at the time, according to the Associated Press. “She was always my best girl.”
Still, Private Presley had a job to do. Ten days after Gladys died, the singer was back at Fort Hood serving his country, and the next month, he was deployed to a base in Friedberg, Germany.
Elvis was still there in the fall of 1959 when a teenaged Priscilla Beaulieu arrived with her stepfather, who was an Air Force officer, and the rest of their family. Elvis and Priscilla met at a party not long after the Beaulieus moved, and they instantly connected despite their 10-year age gap.
Elvis, 24, saw a resemblance between Priscilla, 14, and his recently deceased mother and made sure they saw each other again. After four “dates” between the unlikely pair, Priscilla’s parents insisted on meeting the “Heartbreak Hotel” singer. She later recalled their introduction in an essay for People.
“Let’s face it: You’re Elvis Presley. You have women throwing themselves at you. Why my daughter?” her stepfather asked.
“Well, sir, I happen to be very fond of her,” Elvis responded. “She’s a lot more mature than her age, and I enjoy her company.”
The meeting convinced her apprehensive parents to continue to let Priscilla see Elvis, and the couple spent a considerable amount of time together over the next several months.
In March 1960, having fulfilled the terms of his service, Elvis left Germany and the Army altogether. He was anxious to get back to music and acting, but even as his entertainment career picked back up, he didn’t forget about Priscilla. Seven years later, they got married in Las Vegas, and she became Priscilla Presley.