Priscilla Presley Reveals the Wild Truth About Skipping School—and Meeting Elvis in Germany

Bad Nauheim, Germany — With a warm laugh and a glimmer of nostalgia, Priscilla Presley returned this week to the place where her teenage life took an unexpected and historic turn: a quiet town in Cold War Germany that once served as a temporary home for both her and Elvis Presley.

Speaking just 25 miles north of Wiesbaden, where she attended H. H. Arnold High School on a U.S. Air Force base in the late 1950s, Presley recounted skipping class, making lifelong friendships, and, most fatefully, meeting the King of Rock and Roll when she was only 14.

“After they took attendance, a bunch of us would hop on a bus into town, hang out for a few hours, and go back like nothing happened,” Presley said, smiling during a press event. “It was a lot of fun.”

That lighthearted spirit belies the emotional gravity of her return to Bad Nauheim, a historic spa town where Elvis lived off-post during his U.S. Army service from 1958 to 1960. It was here, at a casual party hosted by a mutual acquaintance, that a young Priscilla Beaulieu first locked eyes with Elvis Presley—an encounter that would ultimately change the course of her life.

“This is very important to me,” Presley said while visiting a park where a statue of Elvis in his Army uniform was unveiled in 2021. “Being back brings back so many memories of that time.”

Back then, Presley was a reluctant transplant. Her stepfather, Air Force officer Joseph Paul Beaulieu, had just been reassigned from Texas to Germany. The teenage Priscilla was devastated at first—until friends pointed out that a certain rock star had just been stationed there too.

“People back in Texas were like, ‘You’re going where Elvis Presley is!’” she recalled. “I never imagined I’d actually meet him.”

But meet him she did, just weeks after arriving. The pair quickly connected and began a quiet but meaningful relationship, sustained over the next three years by letters and phone calls as Elvis resumed his career in Hollywood and Priscilla tried her best to finish high school—though she admits she didn’t always stay in class.

In 1963, at Elvis’ invitation and under strict conditions from her parents and his manager Col. Tom Parker, Priscilla moved to Memphis. She completed her senior year at Immaculate Conception High School and graduated before eventually marrying Elvis in 1967.

Now 79, Presley shared some of the more humorous moments from her return to Germany, including a failed attempt to visit Elvis’ former home in Bad Nauheim in 2016. “I knocked on the door and the woman wouldn’t let me in,” she said, laughing. “I told her I was Priscilla, and that I had really wonderful memories of the house. She absolutely would not let me in.”

Town officials, including Bad Nauheim Mayor Klaus Kress, say they are still trying to convince the homeowner to allow Presley a visit.

Though the original H. H. Arnold High School building was demolished in 2017, its spirit lives on in the new Wiesbaden High School, which preserved the original crest mosaic from the old campus. Presley, who keeps in touch with a few classmates from her time there, expressed empathy for the transient lifestyle of military families.

“Just when you get to know someone and really like them, they leave,” she said. “That was the hardest part.”

While she playfully dodged offering advice to today’s students—“I’m probably not the best person to ask,” she joked—Presley did reflect on her enduring respect for the military and the growth she witnessed in Elvis during his service.

“He didn’t understand why he had to go, but he served, and in the end, he was glad,” she said. “That sorrow of going in was erased by the people he met here.”

Decades later, the memories remain vivid—and so does the legacy of a girl who skipped school, met a legend, and became part of rock and roll history.