Priscilla Presley on Dating Elvis as a Teen: He Was Very Lonely

Priscilla Presley has shared why she thinks Elvis Presley was interested in her when she was a teenager.

Priscilla was 14 and Elvis, 24, when they met in 1959, but in an interview with Fox 32, Priscilla, now 78, said it was "not a sexual relationship" but that Elvis was "very" lonely.

"My relationship with Elvis, you know, people go, ‘Oh my god, how could this happen?’ It was not a sexual relationship, being 14 years old," she said, adding that Elvis would pour "his heart out" to her, and she would listen.

"He was very, very lonely."

Priscilla shared similar remarks earlier this year while speaking to the audience at a Venice Film Festival press conference ahead of the debut screening of Sofia Coppola's new biopic, "Priscilla."

"It was very difficult for my parents to understand that Elvis would be so interested in me and why," Priscilla said, according to Entertainment Tonight.

She went on to explain that she was the "listener" in their relationship.

"Elvis would pour his heart out for me," she said. "His fears, his hopes, the loss of his mother, which he never, ever got over. And I was really sat there to listen and to comfort him. That was really our connection."

Priscilla Presley added that, although she was just 14 years old when they began their relationship, she was "older in life than in numbers."

"That was the attraction. And people think, Oh, it was sex, it was this. Not at all," she said. "I never had sex with him. He was very kind, very soft, very loving. But he also respected the fact I was only 14 years old. We were more in mind and thought and that was our relationship."

As Elvis rose in prominence, their relationship began to falter under the weight of his fame, until things came to a head in 1972, when Priscilla left him.

"It wasn't because I didn't love him," she told the audience. "He was the love of my life. It was the lifestyle that was so difficult for me. And I think any woman can relate to that."