Lisa Marie Presley and Danny Keough’s Relationship Timeline
The late Lisa Marie Presley and ex-husband Danny Keough’s whirlwind romance continued to make headlines years after their split.
After first meeting in 1985, Presley and Keough exchanged vows in October 1988. The couple welcomed daughter Riley Keough and son Benjamin Keough in 1989 and 1992, respectively. (Benjamin died by suicide at age 27 in July 2020.)
Two years later, in 1994, Danny and the only daughter of Priscilla Presley and Elvis Presley called it quits. Despite their split, the pair remained close through the years.
“Their life was very simple,” Riley said of her parents during a January 2025 episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “Not with the press and the craziness. But in terms of at home, she didn’t have ten million assistants. She didn’t need all of that. And I think that changed.”
Following their split, Lisa Marie moved on with Michael Jackson. The twosome secretly tied the knot less than three weeks after her divorce from Danny was finalized. (After her divorce from Jackson in 1996, Lisa Marie was married to Nicolas Cage from 2002 to 2004 and to Michael Lockwood from 2006 to 2021. Lisa Marie and Lockwood welcomed twins Harper and Finley in 2008.)
Keep scrolling to read Lisa Marie and Danny’s relationship timeline:
1985
The couple first crossed paths.
October 1988
Lisa Marie and Danny tied the knot.
1989
The pair welcomed their first child, daughter Riley.
Lisa Marie Presley Called Her Abortion the 'Stupidest Thing I’ve Ever Done'
1992
Lisa Marie and Danny added son Benjamin to their family.
1994
The twosome called it quits.
2003
Following their split, Lisa Marie and Danny remained close. “The smartest thing I’ve ever done is have children with this man because I knew this is the one man I could be connected to for the rest of my life,” Lisa Marie said during a 2003 interview with Rolling Stone.
2005
Lisa Marie told People in 2005 that her relationship with Danny was “like brother and sister.”
“Ultimately this is a good message to send out to people: You don’t have to put your crap on your kids even if you are not together. You can still be civilized,” she said at the time. “I knew at the age that I had the kids with him that Danny was someone I could be connected with for the rest of my life. I knew he would be a good father.”
Look Back at Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley’s Relationship Timeline
2024
In Lisa Marie’s memoir, published posthumously, she revealed that she regretted getting an abortion during her relationship with Danny.
“I’d never gotten pregnant with any other person, which is fascinating because I’d been equally as sloppy, not using birth control or whatever,” Lisa Marie wrote. “With Danny it happened the first time, and then it happened again when we got back together.”
Lisa Marie recalled not knowing about her first pregnancy for four months. She went to the hospital after experiencing “horrible pains.” According to Lisa Marie, doctors initially thought it was her appendix. “They had rushed me into surgery,” she wrote. “When I came around, they told me I’d had an ectopic pregnancy.”
With her second pregnancy, Lisa Marie and Danny “didn’t know what to do” so she had an abortion. She wrote, “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. I was devastated. I did it and we both cried. We were both destroyed and not long after that we fell apart and broke up. I couldn’t live with myself.”
Lisa Marie Presley's Dating History
The pair ultimately reconciled. “I planned and I plotted and I schemed,” Lisa Marie wrote, noting that she knew “exactly” when she was ovulating and went to visit Danny. “I remember getting back on the ship hoping I’d f—ing done it.”
Lisa Marie admitted she “didn’t really mean” to trap Danny, while Riley wrote in her portion of the book that her mom “absolutely meant to trap my dad.” (Riley finished From Here to the Great Unknown following Lisa Marie’s death at age 54 in January 2023.)
Both Lisa Marie and Riley claimed there were “multiple attempts” from Priscilla to stop Danny from being a part of their lives. “It felt like me and Danny against everybody,” Lisa Marie recalled.
2025
Riley shared details of her dynamics with her parents during an episode of the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “There were just not a lot of boundaries. It was very, like, everyone knew everything about everybody. If I was breaking up with a boyfriend, she was involved,” Riley said of her mom. “Everyone, my brother, my dad. We’re very enmeshed, I think.”