When Lisa Marie Presley’s son Benjamin Keough died by suicide in 2020 she began living on borrowed time, Elvis Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough told Oprah Winfrey in an exclusive prime-time special “An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley,” airing Tuesday on CBS.

“I just couldn’t imagine a world where she would make it without him,” said Keough as she recalled the final years she shared with her famous mother, and how she processed her brother’s death, as she finished co-writing “From Here to the Great Unknown,” Lisa Marie’s posthumous memoir.

“She would say ‘I’m going to die of a broken heart’ and I think we felt that,” Keough told Winfrey. 

Lisa Marie’s grief was so immense that she kept Ben’s coffin in her home for about two months after his death. She worked with a funeral homeowner to ensure the body was preserved — using dry ice — until it was ready for burial. 

“Everybody in the house was in the grieving process,” said Keough, adding that Lisa Marie felt comfort when she sat by the body.

During the mourning period, Lisa Marie called in a tattoo artist to help get her ink before laying Ben to rest. She wanted to have a tattoo like his on her hand — the same place he had a tattoo.

“My mom was just very much herself,” Keough said. “She wasn’t a crazy lady.”

Keough recalls how Lisa Marie took the artist to Ben’s coffin to show him the tattoo placement, ensuring that the placement would be exactly right. 

“He’s like, okay, do you have any photos?” Keough remembers the tattoo artist asking. “And she was like ‘No, but I can show you.'”

Keough said the tattoo artist was very professional, studied the placement, and created the meaningful tattoo for Lisa Marie.

The tattoo honoring their mother-son connection proved how close the pair were. In her memoir, Lisa Marie wrote about how much Ben resembled her father Elvis.

“Ben was very similar to his grandfather, very, very, very, and in every way. He even looked like him. Ben was so much like him, it scared me. I didn’t want to tell him because I thought it was too much to put on a kid. We were very close. He’d tell me everything. Ben and I had the same relationship that my father and his mother had. It was a generational f-–ing cycle. Gladys loved my dad so much that she drank herself to death worrying about him. Ben didn’t stand a f-–ing chance,” Lisa Marie wrote. 

Stream Winfrey’s exclusive hourlong interview with Keough on Tuesday, Oct. 8, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. “An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley” will stream live on Paramount+ for “Paramount+ with Showtime” subscribers and will be available on demand the next day for “Paramount+ Essentials” subscribers.

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If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or a suicidal crisis, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. You can also chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline here.

For more information about mental health care resources and support, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–10 p.m. ET, at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or email info@nami.org.

Elvis Presley’s first-born granddaughter, Riley Keough, shared an intimate look at life inside Graceland in Memphis, where her late mother, Lisa Marie Presley, spent part of her childhood.

Keough, the sole heir of the famous estate, learned some new details about her family while parsing through hours of audio recordings her mother — the only daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley — made while working on her memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown.” Keough fulfilled her mother’s wishes and finished co-writing the book after her death at age 54 in January 2023. The memoir was just named Winfrey’s 108th book club pick.

In an exclusive special with Oprah Winfrey that aired Tuesday night, Keough shared her mother’s last recorded words, discussed the impact of Elvis on her family and more.

“I think that in the book she absolutely reveals a part of herself,” Keough told Winfrey during “An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley,” produced by Harpo Productions. 

Here are some highlights from the hour-long special.

Keough says hearing mom’s last words was “very intense”

Months before she died, Lisa Marie asked Keough to help her finish her memoir.

“She was incredibly insecure and I think there were moments where she kind of was going, ‘Why am I even writing a book about myself?’ She didn’t like talking about herself particularly,” Keough told Winfrey.

While she struggled to share private details about her life, Keough said her mom felt compelled to tell her story in hopes of connecting with people and sending a message in a “hopeful kind of way,” especially after her son Benjamin Keough’s death by suicide in 2020.

In the recordings, Lisa Marie described Graceland as a vortex with no rules, and said she was “mostly up to mischief” and a “true wild child.” 

As an adult, Lisa Marie would often return to the property to feel her father’s presence.

“Trying to grieve my father; it’s still there if I go there. I don’t necessarily cry, but I still feel all of the energy that’s there. It’s just still there,” Lisa Marie is heard saying in an audio recording.

In a way, Keough said it was a “beautiful blessing” to hear some of her mother’s last words on tape, but she also described listening to them as “very intense.”

“It was just such a strange experience because, after 30 minutes of it, it feels very much like she’s there,” Keough said.

Keough said her mom was a “self-proclaimed daddy’s girl.”

“I feel so honored that I got to spend any time with him at all,” Lisa Marie said in a recording. Elvis died at 42 years old in 1977, when Lisa Marie was just 9 years old.

Lisa Marie’s last exchange with Elvis before his death

Keough showed Winfrey the last place Lisa Marie and Elvis spoke to each other: the back entrance leading to the patio of Graceland. He was heading in from racquetball and she was heading out to ride her golf cart.

The morning of Elvis’ death, on August 16, 1977, Keough said her mom woke up and instinctively knew something was wrong.

Keough said the memoir is the first time Lisa Marie has ever talked in detail about that day. 

“And she said good night to him and I think she knew saying good night, like she had some kind of a sense. I think she had a sense many times that he wasn’t okay, you know?” Keough explained. “She would tell me that, you know, sometimes she would find him in his bathroom looking kind of out of it or holding onto the railing to, you know, stand up straight. And she also wrote these letters when she was little that we have, kind of saying, I hope my daddy doesn’t die. So there was some kind of sense there.”

Lisa Marie describes watching thousands of mourning fans file into the house to pay tribute to her father, dubbed the “King of Rock and Roll.”

In her memoir, she described being “so busy looking at everyone else’s grief” that she struggled with her own. After everyone was gone at night, Lisa Marie would go downstairs to view her dad’s body.

“I went down to where he was lying in the casket, just to be with him, to touch his face and hold his hand, to talk to him. I asked him, ‘Why is this happening? Why are you doing this?'” Lisa Marie wrote in her memoir.

Inside Lisa Marie and Michael Jackson’s relationship

After divorcing Danny Keough, the father of Riley and Ben Keough, Lisa Marie made waves when she announced she and Michael Jackson tied the knot in 1994. The marriage lasted two years. At the time, Keough recalls nicknaming Jackson “Mimi.”

“I remember how much she loved [Michael Jackson]. She really was, like, obsessed with him,” Keough said.

Lisa Marie spoke about her adoration for Jackson in the audio recordings, saying that he always made sure to pay attention to others and ensure they felt heard.

“He’d be really, really interested and fascinated by everything you had to say about what you did. So he would lift people up. I watched him do it all the time. It was amazing. Ya know, he did it with me,” Lisa Marie said of Jackson.

Keough described the couple as having a “very seemingly happy, loving relationship.” The pair often stayed at Lisa Marie’s house instead of Jackson’s Neverland to create a sense of normalcy for the family – getting ready and taking the kids to school together.

Lisa Marie later briefly married Nicholas Cage in 2002. Then she married Michael Lockwood from 2006 through 2021. They have twin girls, Harper and Finley, who just turned 16.

Keough describes “unbearably dark” time for family

Keough said her mom was a rebellious teenager, but she didn’t believe she had a “proverbial drug problem.”

It wasn’t until she was around 40 years old when she delivered her twin girls in 2008 via a C-section that she had her first taste of opioids. At one point, she was taking dozens of pills a day, according to the book.

“She would pull me aside and said, ‘I’m — I’ve been taking opiates. And at first, I was taking them for pain. Then I was taking them to sleep at night. Now it’s like I’m taking them for fun,” Keough recalled.

Eventually, she went to rehab but later returned to the pills.

The drug abuse spiraled into chaos and Keough said her mom and the twins had to move in with her in Nashville. Her dad, Danny Keough, also moved in to help.

In the book, Keough wrote, “It seemed like it could have been good to have everyone together. But it felt like the end of things. We’d had this amazing, colorful, beautiful, abundant, fun, joyful life – but in that house, it took a turn and got unbearably dark for all of us.”

At that time, Keough realized that rehab may not work and that Lisa Marie’s issues were likely deeper than some accidental drug problem. Keough often would find her mom tearing up as she listened to Elvis’ songs while alone and drunk.

Lisa Marie says son was “so much like [Elvis] it scared me”

Winfrey recalled Lisa Marie telling her she didn’t know if she’d make it after her son’s suicide in 2020. Throughout his life, he struggled with drugs and alcohol. 

“I knew this was the end of her. You know?” Keough admitted. “I just couldn’t imagine a world where she would make it without him.”

In her memoir, Lisa Marie wrote about her close relationship with her son.

“Ben was very similar to his grandfather, very, very, very, and in every way. He even looked like him. Ben was so much like him, it scared me. I didn’t want to tell him because I thought it was too much to put on a kid. We were very close. He’d tell me everything. Ben and I had the same relationship that my father and his mother had.  It was a generational f-–ing cycle. Gladys loved my dad so much that she drank herself to death worrying about him. Ben didn’t stand a f-–ing chance,” wrote Lisa Marie.

After Ben’s death, Lisa Marie and Keough went through his phone, where they discovered a message from him expressing that he felt he had a mental health issue. That surprised Keough. She knew that he liked to party and “go on these benders,” but she didn’t peg him as depressed.

Winfrey said “one of the most shocking things” shared in the book was how Lisa Marie grieved Ben by bringing his coffin into the home for about two months.

Keough said her mom found a very compassionate funeral homeowner who explained how she could keep the casket with her until she was ready for the burial. She had dry ice brought in regularly as part of that preservation process. And she would often just sit with his body.

Lisa Marie was buried next to Ben in the meditation garden at Graceland, where Elvis was also laid to rest.

Keough said she was concerned about Lisa Marie weeks before her death. 

“I think there was always sort of an undertone for me because of this feeling that I felt that I was on borrowed time with her,” Keough said.

Mother-son matching tattoos 

Before she said her final goodbye and buried Ben, Lisa Marie wanted to fulfill a final wish: to get a matching tattoo with her son.

“I think that the story could — on paper, I can see how this sounds completely insane and absurd. But I — my mom was just very much herself.  And I — I don’t know if you knew her.  There’s nothing — you know, she wasn’t a crazy lady,” Keough stated before starting the story.

Lisa Marie brought in a tattoo artist to write Ben’s name on her hand. To get the placement exactly right, she brought the artist into the room and opened Ben’s coffin to show him his hand.

“[The tattoo artist], God bless him, was very normal about the whole thing,” Keough said, calling it “definitely one of the most, like, absurd moments.”

She recalls her mom opening up the casket and the tattoo artist studying the placement and going back and redoing it for her.

“When he left I was, like, ‘Do you know how f—ing crazy that was, what you just did?” Keough asked her mom, joking with Winfrey that the tattoo artist would probably write a book about it at some point.

Graceland’s future and a powerful lesson learned

Keough, an actress who starred in “Daisy Jones and the Six,” says she plans to continue running the beloved Graceland property – which more than 2,000 people tour daily.

“I think, like, my instinct with everything is always to do what my mother would have wanted. Which is to keep it a home. It was our family’s home,” Keough said.

Keough said she had plenty of tough times with her mom – but the love was always there. And that’s something she hopes to pass along to her 2-year-old daughter, Tupelo.

“I think that if I can just make [Tupelo] feel loved the way my mom made us feel loved. It was unconditional. Truly,” she said.

Keough added, “She did things — we had fights. She did things that I, you know, did not approve of.  We’d have awful interactions, as you do with someone on drugs. But … the love was always there, you know?”

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If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or a suicidal crisis, you can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. You can also chat with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline here.

For more information about mental health care resources and support, The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) HelpLine can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–10 p.m. ET, at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or email info@nami.org.

Fans of Elvis Presley — and his famous family — are getting a raw look into their lives in a posthumous memoir titled, “From Here to the Great Unknown,” co-written by Lisa Marie Presley and her daughter, Riley Keough.

Oprah Winfrey revealed the memoir as her newest book club selection on “CBS Mornings” on Tuesday. The book untangles the complicated life of Lisa Marie, including stories about growing up in Graceland, grieving the death of her father Elvis and navigating motherhood.

“Reading the book, it does feel like a tragedy. But I think that it’s really important for me to remember that there was so much joy and love and just wonderful times in our lives,” Keough said during an interview on “CBS Mornings.”

Read an excerpt from the memoir, “From Here to the Great Unknown,” which is on sale now.

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There was this one time—I want to say it was during one of his tours, in Tahoe. He would always take the whole top floor of whatever hotel he was in, for him and the entourage. That night he was back in his bedroom, really, really angry, cursing and screaming. Somebody told me to get behind a chair in the main suite and not move. Everyone was trying to hide behind something, to stay out of the fucking way. So I hid and watched as he took things by the handful, by the armful, and threw them off the balcony. He had found his flight path and he was going to fly it until he was done throwing stuff off that balcony.

Eventually, he calmed down, and someone said to me, “It’s okay, you can come out now, he wants to see you.”

I thought, He wants to see me?

I said, “Why was he so mad?”

“Well,” someone said, “he ran out of water.”

So, I grabbed four bottles of water and I walked into his room.

“Somebody told me you didn’t have any water,” I said, and he just motioned for me to come give him a hug.

He was respectful, though—he wasn’t rude to people, he wasn’t an angry person, he didn’t live there. Some people full-on live in destruction, others buy some real estate and walk around in anger for a little while. My dad would just visit.

Sometimes my dad would take me to an amusement park in Memphis called Libertyland, and he would close it down for me and all the entourage and their families and friends. He and I would ride on the roller coasters. I loved it.

One of my dad’s visits to anger came one time when we were supposed to go to Libertyland. I had invited all my friends, but when I went upstairs the night before, I could hear the wrong kind of tone—this baritone sound, the wrong kind of intensity. I went to my room and could hear loud crashing sounds. He was yelling his fucking head off at somebody. I could hear him saying that we weren’t going to Libertyland the next day. I was devastated.

I found out later that he had run out of something again, and he needed to get it before we went—either that or they wouldn’t give it to him. So, he hit the roof and called about ten different doctors and nurses until he found someone who would give him a fix. Once the nurse or doctor had administered whatever it was he needed, he was fine. And we went to Libertyland.

I remember sitting next to him on the roller coaster that day—the Zippin Pippin—keeping one eye ahead on the ride, and the other on his gun in his holster, which was on my side. Unless you knew or understood him, that sounds terrible, I know. You might think he was crazy, carrying a piece with his daughter sitting next to him, but he was just from the South. It was just really funny.

So we rode and rode.

That was about a week before he died.

From the book: FROM HERE TO THE GREAT UNKNOWN by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough. Copyright © 2024 by Riley Keough. Published by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

Graceland, Elvis Presley‘s famous home, serves as a central point in the memoir “From Here to the Great Unknown,” which was released on Tuesday. The book, started by Lisa Marie Presley and completed by her daughter, Riley Keough, reflects on life at the iconic estate and the emotional impact of losing Elvis Presley.

Oprah Winfrey announced on Tuesday that “From Here to the Great Unknown” is her latest book club selection. Keough helped complete the memoir using her mother’s voice recordings, which captured detailed stories about life at Graceland and the lasting effect of Elvis Presley’s death.

“The first time that I played the tapes was incredibly emotional. And then once I was sort of used to it, it really depended on what she was talking about. Some of the tapes are really funny. Some of them are really touching. So it was a wild, you know, wild ride of emotion,” Keough said.

Keough explained that her mother’s memories of Graceland were filled with both joy and challenges.

“I think that it’s interesting, because I think that reading the book, it does feel like a tragedy, but I think that it’s really important for me to remember that there was so much joy and love and just wonderful times in our lives, and I think that she had experienced a lot of loss very early on in her life, and I think a lot of her life was dictated by that and by grief,” she said.

In the memoir, Lisa Marie Presley also recounts humorous moments, including stories of her at 4 years old, driving a golf cart around Graceland and firing employees. “She was a little bit of a terror,” Keough recalled with a smile.

Both Winfrey and Keough spoke about the lasting fascination with Elvis Presley’s life and legacy. Thousands of fans still visit Graceland daily, with many deeply moved as they reflect on the impact of his music and life story. For Lisa Marie Presley, Graceland was a place of solace, where she often stayed in Elvis Presley’s bedroom, listening to his music as she mourned his loss.

The memoir also highlights Lisa Marie Presley’s personal struggles, particularly the grief she carried after the death of her father, and later her son, Ben.

The book’s release on Tuesday comes as Winfrey traveled to Graceland for Keough’s first major interview since her mother died last year, for “An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie, and Riley.” It will premiere on CBS on Tuesday, Oct. 8 at 8 p.m. ET/PT, and will be available for streaming on Paramount+.

Elvis Presley’s oldest granddaughter, Riley Keough, recently showed off some of the King’s most prized possessions and the items he’d typically bring on the road with him inside his black box – which Keough compared to a purse.

“These are special,” commented Oprah Winfrey as she examined some of Elvis’ special items up close while wearing gloves alongside Keough in the first in-depth interview she’s given since her mother Lisa Marie Presley’s death in 2023 at the age of 54. Keough gave Winfrey an intimate look at the famous family’s life and a tour of Graceland in Memphis for “An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley,” which will air Tuesday night on CBS.

One of the first items Keough showed Winfrey was his cream-colored 1957 Bible, which had writing inside. She also held up her mother’s golf cart key, which she used to drive around Graceland when she was as young as 4.

“She was a terror. She crashed a few,” joked Keough.

Cracking open Elvis’ black box

Keough also gave Winfrey a peek inside a large black box that Elvis typically used while traveling.

“You can look inside it,” Keough told Winfrey. “It was sort of his most personal things and nothing’s been touched.”

Inside, Winfrey found Elvis’ green American Express card, which expired in May 1972, as well as a comb that still contained strands of his hair. The black box also contained a Polaroid and scraps of miscellaneous ticket stubs and papers, among other items.

“You could probably sell those for a lot,” said Keough of Elvis’ hair.

Oprah agreed, “Yeah, you could sell that for a lot – that hair right there. Elvis’ comb. Wow. Treasures from Elvis’ black box. Wow.”

Keough is now the sole heir of the famous Graceland estate, where her mother spent part of her childhood and shared the second floor with Elvis. The 35-year-old Emmy-nominated actor and director went on a deep dive into her family’s past while finishing her mother’s memoir, which she titled, “From Here to the Great Unknown.”

Stream Winfrey’s exclusive hourlong interview with Keough on Tuesday, Oct. 8, at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS. “An Oprah Special: The Presleys — Elvis, Lisa Marie and Riley” will stream live on Paramount+ for “Paramount+ with Showtime” subscribers and will be available on demand the next day for “Paramount+ Essentials” subscribers.