All About Priscilla Presley’s 3.5-Carat Engagement Ring from Elvis

Elvis and Priscilla Presley’s relationship has spawned books, a film, and endless Internet discourse. The King of Rock ‘n’ Roll was 24 when he met a teenage Priscilla during his military service in West Germany. They kept in touch, even after he’d returned to the United States. In 1963—the year she turned 18—Priscilla’s parents allowed her to move to Memphis, Tennessee and live at Elvis’s Graceland estate. 

Their relationship continued to bloom. When Priscilla was 20, the singer orchestrated a Christmas Eve proposal, giving his bride-to-be a 3.5-carat engagement ring featuring 20 detachable baguette-cut accent diamonds. In her 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, Priscilla described the proposal as “the most beautiful and romantic moment of my life.”

Soon, wedding bells were ringing. Priscilla wed Elvis on May 1, 1967 in an intimate Las Vegas ceremony, wearing a beaded silk chiffon gown. That’s not where the bridal glamour ended—she topped her signature teased-up bouffant hairdo with a rhinestone tiara and three-foot tulle veil, per People. As for her now-iconic makeup look, the bride donned long lashes and thick stripes of mod eyeliner, softened by a pale-pink lipstick.

Their marriage lasted until 1972, when the “Hound Dog” singer filed for divorce. The couple had welcomed one child together, daughter Lisa Marie Presley. In a 2016 appearance on British talk show Loose Women, the former Mrs. Presley explained the complicated feelings behind her separation from the King. “I did not divorce him because I didn’t love him. He was the love of my life, truly. If anything, I left because…I needed to find out what the world was like,” she shared, adding that they “still loved each other” after their divorce.

While their union didn’t last, their love story remains a fixture in pop-culture history. Below, learn all the details about Priscilla Presley’s engagement ring from Elvis.

It’s a 3.5-carat diamond ring with 20 detachable diamonds.

Per Priscilla’s memoir Elvis and Me, Elvis popped the question with an impressive 3.5-carat diamond “encircled by a row of smaller diamonds, which were detachable,” allowing her to wear the piece two ways. Vogue reported that Memphis jeweler Harry Levitch sold the ring to Elvis. After their 1967 nuptials, Priscilla rarely wore her engagement ring (which doubled as her wedding ring).

One recreation of the ring for the 1988 film Elvis and Me shows the detachable diamonds arranged in a crescent shape on one band. The accent stones neatly circle the central 3.5-carat solitaire diamond, allowing the two interlocked rings to pass as one. 

Priscilla revealed in a 2014 Facebook post that she still has her engagement/wedding ring, and that “[m]aybe one day” she will share a closer look at the design.

Elvis’s former secretary claims it cost him nearly $4,000.

After Elvis’s death in 1977, his private secretary, Becky Yancey, published a tell-all about her time working for the singer. Titled My Life with Elvis, the book shares a few details about the rock ’n’ roll icon’s relationship with Priscilla—and the jewelry he gifted his bride-to-be. Yancey claims she wrote a check for “nearly four thousand dollars” for Priscilla’s engagement ring, bought from Levitch. 

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI Inflation Calculator, $4,000 in December 1966 is equivalent to approximately $39,000 in 2025.

Elvis had an equally glitzy wedding band.

Priscilla’s engagement ring, which she wore at her wedding to Elvis, was certainly a showstopper—but she wasn’t the only one blinged-out for the big day. Her husband-to-be commissioned his own diamond-encrusted ring from jeweler Levitch.

Elvis’s wedding band, put up for auction in 2013, features 24 diamonds spread across three rows, all set in platinum. The auction listing states their total weight at approximately 1.65 carats. Each row holds eight diamonds—baguette-cut in the center, full-cut on the top and bottom—supposedly a nod to Elvis’s lucky number.

Photographs from the wedding ceremony show Elvis wearing a horseshoe-shaped ring in addition to his wedding band. Priscilla wore a similarly equestrian-inspired ring alongside her engagement piece—more on that below.

Priscilla also wore a horseshoe-shaped diamond ring.

A close look at the pictures from Elvis and Priscilla’s quiet ceremony reveals another flashy bauble on the bride’s finger. This horseshoe-shaped ring, set on a thicker band than the engagement ring, is said to match one regularly worn by Elvis—the King even wore his on their wedding day to match Priscilla, according to a description of the ring from when Christie’s auctioned it off in 2001 for $18,800.

Replicas of both the 3.5-carat engagement ring and the horseshoe-shaped ring appear in Baz Luhrmann’s 2022 biopic Elvis, per Natural Diamonds. In Sofia Coppola’s 2023 biopic Priscilla, the titular bride (played by Cailee Spaeny) wears a fancy yellow diamond ring flanked by a halo of white accent diamonds, a creative take on her real-life jewel. At the end of the teaser trailer for Coppola’s film, a replica of the horseshoe-shaped ring is also visible.