Elvis Presley and June Juanico had a two-year, on-again, off-again romance from 1955 to 1957, during the early rise of his superstardom. June, a former beauty queen from Biloxi, Mississippi, has been described as the only girlfriend Elvis’s mother, Gladys, ever approved of.
Elvis met June in June 1955 after one of his concerts in Biloxi and was immediately smitten, asking her out that night. They shared a deep emotional connection and a passionate, but chaste, physical relationship, with Juanico stating they never had sexual intercourse because she was afraid of getting pregnant.
June Juanico: “Elvis was the love of my life. I met him in the summer of 1955, when he was just a regional star. He had been in my hometown of Biloxi, Mississippi, several times before, and people said, ‘You need to see him,’ and I went on this one night.
“Girls were screaming over him, and I’m just not that kind. I was passing by him, not even looking at him, and he reached through the crowd and grabbed my arm. He said, ‘Where are you going?’
“What I remember most about that night was sitting in his car outside my house, just talking, while my mother kept an eye out to see what I was doing. The first thing I said was, ‘What is your real name?' I had never heard of a name like Elvis. And he said, ‘What do you mean my real name? My name is Elvis Aaron Presley.’ We sat there until the sun came up at 6 a.m. He was shocked because my parents were divorced. He thought marriage was a lifelong thing, and when he got married, it was going to be forever. And he told me all about his twin who was dead at birth. I’d never met anybody quite like him.”
As Elvis’s fame exploded, their relationship was strained by the lack of privacy and the constant attention from fans and reporters. Juanico often blamed Elvis’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker, for encouraging Elvis to date other beautiful, famous women for publicity, which caused issues in their relationship.
Elvis took a three-week vacation with June in Biloxi in the summer of 1956, during which time their relationship was heavily covered by the press. Despite their strong feelings and discussions of marriage, the pressures of his career and his dating of other women made a lasting relationship difficult.
The romance officially ended in March 1957 when Elvis, during a train layover in New Orleans, asked June to meet him. She informed him that she was engaged to be married to another man.
“The next time I saw him was in a movie theater in Memphis in the early 1960s,” Juanico said. “I went down the row behind him and tapped him on the back, and he turned around and our eyes just locked. He got up and put me in a death grip.”
June Juanico later wrote a memoir about their time together, titled Elvis in the Twilight of Memory, and always spoke fondly of him, maintaining that she never stopped loving him and they remained lifelong friends.
“In August 1977, my mother was at my house,’ she recalled. “I had laid down for a nap, and when I came out of my bedroom my mother was looking at me really strange. Finally, she said, ‘June!’ She had tears in her eyes. She said, ‘I just heard on the television that Elvis Presley has died.’ I looked at her and said, ‘That can’t be! That can’t be!’ I went over to the television and fell to my knees in front of it. I couldn’t breathe. I honestly think if my mother had not been with me, I might have died. In my heart, I always thought Elvis and I would be together somewhere down the road. I was married for 36 years, and I’ve got two beautiful children and beautiful grandchildren. I’ve been blessed in many ways. But I have just never been able to stop loving Elvis.”
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