TLDR: Lisa Marie Presley was married four times: to musician Danny Keough (1988-1994, two kids including Riley), Michael Jackson (1994-1996, 20 months), Nicolas Cage (2002-2004, only 108 days), and Michael Lockwood (2006-2021, twin daughters and a brutal divorce).
Her first husband Danny became her lifelong best friend and performed CPR when she died. Her marriage to Jackson was real despite public skepticism, and her divorce from Lockwood lasted longer than her marriage to Cage.
Lisa Marie Presley’s love life was absolutely wild. She married four different guys, divorced all four, and each relationship was more dramatic than the last.
From a musician she met at a Scientology center to the actual King of Pop to an Oscar-winning actor obsessed with her dad to another musician who ended up in a nasty court battle, Lisa Marie’s marriages were a rollercoaster.
Here’s the tea on all four of Lisa Marie Presley’s husbands and the wild stories behind each marriage.
Danny Keough: The First Husband Who Became Her Best Friend
Lisa Marie met Danny Keough in 1985 at a Scientology center in Los Angeles. She was a teenager fresh out of rehab, and he was a musician about three years older who played bass guitar.
Danny was totally different from the guys who just wanted a piece of the Presley fame. He was broke, artistic, and didn’t care about money.
For Lisa Marie, who grew up at Graceland with everything money could buy, Danny’s simple lifestyle was refreshing.
They got married on October 3, 1988, when Lisa Marie was only 20. The wedding was at the Scientology center, and they honeymooned on a Scientology cruise ship.
Less than a year later, they had their first baby, Danielle Riley Keough (the actress Riley Keough). Then came their son Benjamin in 1992. Fun fact: Benjamin was born using Scientology’s “Silent Birth” method where everyone in the delivery room has to stay totally quiet.
But here’s where things got complicated. Lisa Marie was rich. Like, really rich. And Danny wasn’t. She admitted years later that the money thing caused major problems. “It’s hard for a man to be with a woman who is stronger, wealthier,” she said.
Danny started resenting that it was always her world, her money, her life.
By 1994, the romance was dead. Lisa Marie got a super quick divorce in the Dominican Republic on May 6, 1994. And get this… she got married again just 20 days later. Yeah, she was already lining up husband number two.
But here’s the plot twist. Unlike most exes, Danny and Lisa Marie stayed best friends. Like, lived-in-her-guest-house best friends. He played bass in her band, hung out with the kids, and basically never left.
When their son Benjamin died in 2020, Danny moved back into the main house to help Lisa Marie through her grief. And when Lisa Marie had a heart attack in 2023, Danny was the one doing CPR trying to save her life.
So yeah, they divorced after six years of marriage, but stayed connected for almost 30 years until she died. That’s some serious friendship right there.
Michael Jackson: The 20-Month Marriage Everyone Said Was Fake
Okay, so this is the marriage that absolutely broke the internet before the internet was even really a thing.
Lisa Marie first met Michael Jackson when she was seven years old at a Jackson 5 concert in Vegas. But they didn’t start anything romantic until late 1992, when she was still married to Danny.
They got close when Michael was dealing with the 1993 child molestation accusations. He called Lisa Marie for support, and they spent hours on the phone building this intense emotional connection.
Lisa Marie later admitted she had a total savior complex. She thought Michael was just misunderstood and that all the bad people around him were the real problem. Classic “I can fix him” energy.
In her book that came out after she died, Lisa Marie spilled some wild tea. Michael straight up told her he was in love with her and wanted to marry her and have babies. Oh, and here’s the kicker: he said he was still a virgin at 35.
He told her he’d kissed Tatum O’Neal and had a non-physical thing with Brooke Shields. Madonna apparently tried to make a move, but nothing happened there either.
Now, everyone said their marriage was totally fake and just for PR. But Lisa Marie swore up and down it was real. She even told friends Michael was “hot stuff in bed” and they were into role-playing. So yeah, definitely not a fake marriage on her end.
They got married on May 26, 1994, literally 20 days after her divorce from Danny came through. Secret ceremony in the Dominican Republic. Lisa Marie put out a statement calling herself “Mrs. Lisa Marie Presley-Jackson” and saying she was totally in love.
But it fell apart fast. Here’s why:
Michael wanted kids immediately. Lisa Marie already had two and wasn’t ready for more. She was worried about what would happen if they divorced. When she said no, Michael literally threatened that his friend Debbie Rowe would have his babies instead. Super manipulative.
Lisa Marie also hated everyone around Michael. She called them “vampires” who got him hooked on pills. Since she’d battled her own addiction, being around all those drugs freaked her out.
And she started feeling used. Like that famous kiss at the 1994 MTV VMAs? Lisa Marie thought it was staged and fake. And when Michael wanted to hold a séance to talk to Elvis and get his “approval” of the marriage, Lisa Marie was like absolutely not.
The final straw was in December 1995. Michael collapsed during rehearsals and ended up in the hospital. They had a huge fight and he literally told her to leave because she was raising his heart rate. Wow.
She filed for divorce in January 1996. The marriage lasted about 20 months on paper.
But here’s the thing… they kept seeing each other on and off for years after that. Lisa Marie told Oprah in 2003 that they tried to make it work multiple times before Michael finally married Debbie Rowe and had kids.
Lisa Marie said later that leaving Danny for Michael was her biggest mistake. Not because she didn’t love Michael, but because the whole situation was just too messy to ever work.
Nicolas Cage: The 108-Day Marriage That Was Pure Chaos
After breaking off an engagement to some musician named John Oszajca, Lisa Marie met Nicolas Cage at a party in October 2000.
They clicked instantly. Cage totally got the whole famous-family-name thing because his uncle is Francis Ford Coppola. Plus, he was obsessed with Elvis. Like, he literally based a movie character on Elvis in “Wild at Heart.”
Lisa Marie said their connection was like “thunderstruck.” She called them “kindred spirits” but also said, “We’re both so dramatic and dynamic that when it was good, it was uniquely good, and when it was bad, it was a bloody nightmare.”
She literally compared them to two pirates who would sink their own ship. Not exactly a ringing endorsement for marriage material.
And the relationship was absolutely unhinged. During one fight on a yacht, Lisa Marie literally threw her $65,000 engagement ring into the ocean. Just yeeted it right into the water. Cage hired professional divers to find it, but it was gone forever.
So what did he do? Bought her an even bigger ring a few days later. A 10-carat diamond this time.
Despite literally every red flag in existence, they got married on August 10, 2002, in Hawaii. The timing was weird too because it was during the week of the 25th anniversary of Elvis’s death. Very on-brand for them.
The marriage lasted exactly 108 days. Not even four months. Cage filed for divorce on November 25, 2002.
He told Barbara Walters that when you have two really strong, intense personalities, sometimes you just can’t make it work. Which is a nice way of saying they probably fought constantly.
The divorce took almost 18 months to finalize. So the divorce lasted way longer than the actual marriage. They finished it up in May 2004. Luckily they had a prenup, so nobody had to pay anybody.
Lisa Marie later said they were like “two 12-year-olds in a sandbox.” But the anger faded over time. When she died, Cage said he was heartbroken and that she had “the greatest laugh of anyone I ever met.” So at least they ended on good terms.
Michael Lockwood: The 10-Year Marriage That Turned Into a War
After two celebrity train wrecks, Lisa Marie decided to go back to basics. She married Michael Lockwood, a guitarist who worked as her musical director. Basically another Danny Keough type who wouldn’t compete for attention.
They got married on January 22, 2006, in Japan. The couple moved to a sheep farm in England to escape all the LA craziness and tried to live a normal, quiet life.
In October 2008, they had twin girls, Harper and Finley.
For almost 10 years, this seemed like it was working. It was her longest marriage by far. Then everything exploded.
In 2016, Lisa Marie filed for divorce and it got UGLY. The whole thing turned into a total nightmare over money. Lisa Marie found out her fortune was basically gone. Her business manager had totally screwed her over, and she was $16 million in debt.
Lockwood wanted $40,000 a month in spousal support, saying he’d given up his career to support hers. But there was one problem. They’d signed a postnup in 2007 saying neither of them would pay alimony if they split up.
Lockwood tried to say he didn’t really read it and was forced to sign it. But in 2018, a judge said nope, the agreement is valid. You signed it with a lawyer present. This saved Lisa Marie from having to pay him, though she still had to cover $50,000 of his legal fees.
Then things got even darker.
The custody battle over the twins was nasty. In 2017, Lisa Marie said she found “disturbing” photos and videos of children on Lockwood’s computer. She literally said in court papers, “I was shocked and horrified and sick to my stomach.”
Because of this, the twins got temporarily placed with their grandma Priscilla while child services investigated. No criminal charges ever got filed against Lockwood, but the whole thing destroyed any chance they’d ever be friendly co-parents.
The divorce took FIVE YEARS to finalize. They filed in 2016 and it didn’t end until 2021. By the time Lisa Marie died in 2023, she had the girls 60% of the time and Lockwood had them 40%.
After Lisa Marie died, Lockwood got full custody as the surviving parent. Riley and Priscilla didn’t fight it. The girls reportedly wanted to live with their dad anyway.
What All These Marriages Say About Lisa Marie
Looking at all four marriages, you can see Lisa Marie was basically trying to figure out who she was outside of being Elvis’s daughter. And honestly? She never quite found it.
With Danny, she wanted normal and grounded. When that couldn’t survive the money drama, she swung completely the other way to Michael Jackson, someone who got what it was like to be THAT famous. When that turned into chaos, she tried Nicolas Cage, another intense personality who understood famous families.
When that exploded in 108 days, she went back to the Danny model with Michael Lockwood, hoping for stability. And that ended in a five-year legal war.
The only marriage that actually survived in any real way was her first one with Danny. He was there when their son died. He was there trying to save her when she had a heart attack. That says something.
Lisa Marie never gave up trying to find love, even when people made fun of her or her relationships crashed and burned publicly. She kept searching for something real in a world that mostly saw her as Elvis’s kid.
Now the story of these four marriages lives on through her kids. Riley, from her first marriage, controls the whole Elvis estate. Her twin daughters from her fourth marriage live with their dad. It’s messy and complicated, just like Lisa Marie’s life was.
But maybe that’s the most honest legacy she could leave.
