Lisa Marie Presley admits she “planned” to trap her ex by getting pregnant

Lisa Marie Presley speaks extremely openly about the ups and downs of her personal life in her posthumously published memoir. From here into the great unknown – That includes the “devastating” abortion that caused her to become pregnant with her daughter, Riley Keough.

The aborted pregnancy was Presley's second with Chicago-born musician Danny Keough. Just four months into their relationship, Presley was rushed to the hospital because she thought she had a ruptured appendix, but instead she learned she was experiencing an ectopic pregnancy. Months later, at just 19, she discovered she was pregnant again.

“I didn’t know what to do and Danny didn’t know either,” Presley recalls. “I ended up having an abortion.” And it was the stupidest thing I've ever done in my life.

She continues: “I was devastated. I did it and we both cried. We were both destroyed and not long after we fell apart and separated. I couldn’t live with myself.”

Presley regretted her decision and “made a plan” to have a child with Keough when he joined his band on a cruise ship traveling through the Caribbean.

“I couldn't believe I had an abortion. “I was so upset with myself. So I made a plan,” she writes. “I planned and planned and planned. I pinpointed when I would ovulate—I even drove to Memphis first to hang out with my Aunt Patsy and figure out how to make it happen. It was a group effort. I got it down to a science – and then deliberately planned a trip to see Danny on the ship.”

The couple spent the night in Aruba, where, unbeknownst to Keough, Presley put her plan to get pregnant into action.

“Danny had no idea about my plan. But I didn’t care what he thought,” Presley admits in his memoirs. “I didn’t care if he wanted to be there or not. I felt like I had to make it up to her because I still couldn't believe I had an abortion. I thought, “I'm going to have this child.” “There's a child that I absolutely have to have.” I would talk to the lost child and say, “I'm so sorry, I can't believe I did this “Please forgive me and stay with me until I get pregnant again.'”

Presley got her wish when she took a pregnancy test two weeks after leaving Aruba and it came back positive. She writes that when she called Keough to break the news, the next step was clear even before she realized it herself.

“Danny knew he had to marry me,” writes Presley, the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley. “I set a trap for him. I didn’t really mean to, but I did it.”

Before her sudden death in 2023, Presley asked her daughter for help in completing her lengthy memoir. The resulting book combines Presley's memories with Keough's own knowledge of the events that transpired – including the days leading up to her own conception.

“My mother then told me every detail about the timing of her ovulation for that moment in Aruba. And she was determined to trap my father,” Riley wrote, giving insight into her father’s side of the story. “The day my father found out he was going to be a father, he was rehearsing in the disco room. The ship rocked back and forth and he held the drummer's cymbal to keep it from falling. There was a green room to the right of the disco room, and from there someone called out, 'There's a call for you, Danny.'”

Riley added that it was “extremely rare” to receive a call on a ship, as it was possible “long before cell phones.”

“When my dad got on the phone (he remembers what the phone looked like, it was white), my mom said, 'I'm pregnant,' and my dad dropped the phone,” Riley shared. “He was in shock because he never planned to get married or have children. But something made him say, 'Let's do it.' So he quickly recovered, picked up the phone and just said, 'Okay.'”

The couple married in 1988 and welcomed son Benjamin – who died by suicide in 2020 – into the family three years after Riley was born. Two years later, in 1994, Presley divorced Keough and 20 days later began a tumultuous two-year marriage to singer Michael Jackson. They divorced in 1996, citing “irreconcilable differences” and, according to Presley, they continued to be together on and off for four years after their divorce.

Presley was subsequently engaged to Hawaii-born singer-songwriter John Oszajca for 16 months beginning in December 1999 before they separated. She married Nicolas Cage in August 2002 and he filed for divorce a few months later. Presley's last marriage was to music producer Michael Lockwood, whom she married in January 2006, before giving birth to her twin daughters Harper and Finley in 2008. Ten years after their marriage, Presley filed for divorce from Lockwood and a contentious custody battle ensued.

Presley died on January 12, 2023 at the age of 54 from complications of a small intestinal obstruction, a long-term complication of bariatric surgery.

From here to the great unknown is out now.