What Was Elvis Presley Really Like? Fans Share Stories About Meeting The Music Icon

From Redditor u/Necrolifter:

He really was a nice guy. When my father was born, shortly after, he had health complications and almost died, resulting in an ER visit. Elvis was in the same hospital in California having a splinter removed. My grandma was a HUGE fan, and of course, ended up talking to him. When all was said and done, when they were checking out of the hospital, she was informed that he paid all of the medical bills for my father's complications. My family has never been well off, so you can imagine how big of a deal that was to my family.

In 2018, Nathaniel Wiggison talked about what it was like to serve with Elvis Presley in the United States Army. He recalled, “It made me feel great to be with him… Everybody knew who he was… He fit in so easy.”

Wiggison also remembered Elvis's parents, Vernon and Gladys, visiting, and how “his mother always told us to take care of each other… She talked to all of us like we were her children. It was wonderful.” After Gladys's death in August 1958, Elvis “said he'd give anything he had to get her back… but he knew he couldn't do that.”

Wiggison had more recollections about his time with Elvis:

He showed me all the telegrams he got from celebrities. He had three books filled this wide with them… When things got tough… you could be out at night, it's cold and raining and you're on guard duty, and he was out there, too. If he could do it, that made me feel like, OK, I can do this!

Wiggison said he wants "everyone to know… how good a person Elvis was. He was the kind of person I loved being around.”

Larry Silva and one of his friends met Elvis Presley in Florida in 1955, he told The Village's Daily Sun:

I remember the Elvis concert very well, because two of us were trying to sneak in to hear both Elvis and Hank Snow. We were behind the Pavilion, trying to figure how we were going to get in, when a limo pulled up, and out steps Elvis. He asked what we were doing, so we told him. He said, “Follow me,” and off we went… Our conversation was totally about being broke, and yet wanting to see the show. So I guess he felt sorry for us, and let us go in with him.

Marsha Conolly had multiple interactions with Elvis Presley during the 1950s. The first time was on May 30, 1955, at a performance at the Peabody Auditorium in Daytona Beach. She told her stories to The Village's Daily Sun:

He was kind of innocent at the time. He was very quiet. He was a nice guy. I can’t say a thing bad about him. He was very mannerly, very much a Southern gentleman… It never escalated into anything. There never was a romance. He took my girlfriend and I home after the show. He kissed me, and then my mother came out.

When Elvis returned to Daytona Beach the following year, Conolly saw him again, she recalled: “Everybody was getting his autograph, and when I came up and he said, ‘Marsha!’ you should have seen the looks on the faces of the other girls when he left with me.”

Fans shared their recollections of meeting Elvis Presley with the The Village's Daily Sun newspaper in 2008. James Mott, who would later work for Elvis, remembered one interaction the musician had with an especially impatient reporter:

Elvis told her he would be happy to answer all her questions momentarily when he finished talking with us. The moment he turned around to talk with us, the reporter, who was standing directly behind Elvis, began tapping him on the shoulder as rapidly as a machine gun and saying his name over and over again, “Elvis,” "Elvis," “Elvis,” almost as rapidly as the tapping. He kept turning around and telling her that he would be with her in a moment. But she kept up the shoulder-tapping and calling his name constantly, being very rude, and never slowing down… I really admired him for keeping his cool.

Sharon Beran of Huntington Beach, CA, told The Orange County Register in 2007 that the only thing that ever “impressed my two daughters and son is the fact that Elvis kissed me!” Beran might not have received that kiss if she hadn't been persistent in meeting Elvis:

I went to see Elvis when he reopened at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Elvis came out in his (famous) white suit - all the women went wild. Most of us rushed down to the stage. A woman at the end of a table would not let me pass her so I could get to the stage. I stepped up on her chair and walk down the middle of the table. Security started to get me down. Elvis told them “No, let her be.” He was talking to the other women at the other end of the stage. They were kissing his cheek and shaking his hand. When he came down to me at the end of the stage, he said, “Do you want to kiss me?” I said, “No, but you may kiss me.” Then he kissed me, and told one of his staff to bring me one of his pictures. I got kissed by Elvis, and his signed picture. When he died in 1977 I wore a black arm band to my bridge group. When I told them Elvis had just died, we all cried.