Graceland has been a museum for over 40 years, but Elvis Presley’s daughter always still saw the mansion as home.
Lisa Marie Presley, who died in January, would take her kids to the house for Thanksgiving after the tours stopped, enjoy riding the gold carts and seeing the horses as a family.
When it came to dinner, china plates were taken out of a drawer from Aunt Delta’s bedroom just off Graceland’s kitchen.
They would then be laid out at the dining room table with an extra one added on the end for more guests.
Lisa Marie once told USA Today: “It’s a very special place…it shuts down quite nice at night. I have family that I love very much who live there in Memphis. When I go… I visit [Graceland]. We have dinner there. My family still goes there, and we still have a life there.”
Express.co.uk recently caught up with Graceland archivist and personal friend of Lisa Marie, Angie Marchese, who was in London overseeing the opening of the Direct From Graceland: Elvis exhibition, with over 400 items from the mansion on display.
On Lisa Marie’s Thanksgiving dinners at Graceland, she shared: “The last tour was normally at 5pm and then we would take the ropes down and turn all the kitchen appliances on. Elvis’ original cooks would come and make what they used to make for them, which was quite amazing. And then when the last cook passed away we found a caterer that Lisa liked to come in and make all of her favourite foods.
“It really brought the house to life. It was a fun time to experience Graceland in that way and they’d all leave at like two or three in the morning and then we’d put the ropes back up, turn the equipment off, put the Plexiglass back on and tourists would come through the next day.”
On if Lisa Marie ever stayed upstairs at Graceland, which is off-limits to tourists, over Thanksgiving she said: “Lisa did a couple of times, but normally not.”
And with her untimely death, will Elvis’ granddaughter Riley Keough and her teenage half-sisters keep up the Thanksgiving traditions at the mansion?
Angie said: “I hope so. I think Riley and the girls have a different connection with Graceland than Lisa did. They’re a generation removed from it, they never knew Elvis, they only know Graceland through their mom and through what she shared with them about the house and their memories of the house being there with her.
“I think those things will still happen in time. I think right now family is still obviously processing everything and trying to find what their new normal is.”