We would be remiss if we didn’t note that today marks the divorcersary of one Elvis and Priscilla Presley, seen here leaving court after making it official, and about which they actually look fairly amicable — although my feeling is that when people attend court in sweatsuits, they are often depressed. I also hope Priscilla still has that coat, because it’s amazing and I assume it’s all different kinds of leather and therefore perfect for her to wear around the ranch I assume she owns. Having said that, Informative Caption tells us that “the six year marriage ended with a modified property settlement involving $1.5 million” which seems VERY LOW to me.

In looking this up, I came across this very amazing paragraph and a half from Biography:

Priscilla had a short-lived liaison with the owner of a dance school. And despite renewing vows in Hawaii, she continued to experience the limitations of her marriage. “My life was his life,” she said to People magazine in 1978. “My problems were secondary.” Still unfulfilled, she had an affair with her karate instructor, Mike Stone. In 1972, she told Elvis she was leaving him. When he found out about her affair, he wanted to hire a hitman to kill her partner but was convinced not to.

Their divorce, which was finalized on October 9, 1973, was an amicable one.

You KNOW people truly are amicable when your ex threatens to have your karate instructor/lover murdered and you guys manage to work through it. And, indeed, Informative Caption was both wrong and incomplete — it was 1.7 million in settlement and $8,000 in alimony for ten years. That’s 9.9 million dollars in 2020, and honestly that STILL seems low for me when you and Elvis don’t have a pre-nup — which is how I fell into this fascinating wormhole of reading about how Priscilla took over Elvis’s (very screwed up) estate when he died and turned out to be very, very good at it. I bet she does still have that coat.

[Photo: AP/Shutterstock]
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