Nostalgia
Barbara Eden Reveals the Marriage Advice She Gave Elvis Presley About Priscilla
Barbara Eden is reflecting on the off-camera marriage advice she gave her former costar Elvis Presley.
The actress, 94, was playing Elvis’ love interest in the 1960 Western Flaming Star when he asked how she managed to make her marriage to fellow actor Michael Ansara work while the pair navigated their careers, Eden explained in an interview with Entertainment Weekly published on Sunday, August 16.
“I said, ‘Look, this is our job. This is how we make a living … It is a job, acting.’ And you work on it,” the I Dream of Jeannie alum said, per the outlet. “I don’t know how many years or how many people do this, but you learn to do things you probably never do in real life.”
Depicting an on-screen romance, she explained, was like studying theater and learning how to fence. “I knew when I was doing it I’d never use it, but it’s part of the thing you do, and you do sort of use pieces of it [in your work].”
At the time, the actress had been married to Ansara for two years. The pair would ultimately divorce in 1974.
Eden also recalled the conversation to Fox News Digital in 2023, saying Elvis was interested in a young woman he had met in Germany, was worried about bringing her to the United States and had asked her for relationship advice.
“I told him, ‘This is our work,'” the Harper Valley P.T.A. star recalled. “‘He goes on location, I go on location. But we’re always together. This is how we make money, but we are a team. And as long as the two of you are a team, it will work out.’ But Elvis was worried.”
The woman turned out to be Priscilla Presley, whom he married in 1967 when he was 32 and she was 21. They welcomed their only child, daughter Lisa Marie Presley, the following year.
The pair divorced in 1973, four years before the King of Rock ‘N’ Roll’s death.
