In her 73 years, Linda Thompson has seen incredible twists of fate and fortune, but of all those years little compares to her all-too-brief time with Elvis Presley.
Growing up, back then as a southern girl in Memphis, Tenn., for she and millions of others, the King of Rock and Roll was an unattainable hunka, hunka of burning love.
At least that’s what she thought at the time.
Linda and her brother Sam were the very special guests at this past weekend’s Penticton Northwest Elvis Festival and shared many memories of their time with Presley.
Sam worked as security for Elvis on tour and eventually became his bodyguard during the last five years of his life.
Linda’s relationship with Elvis went much deeper than that, with Presley coming into her life when she was 22 and he was 37 on a hot July night in Memphis in 1972.
The two first met when Linda, then Miss Tennessee Universe, and her best friend Jeanne LeMay Dumas (Miss Rhode Island) were invited to the Memphian theatre for one of Elvis’ many reserved movie nights.
In their roles as Miss USA contestants, the two women were actually scheduled to work that night, but Dumas talked her friend into going.
It was something Linda did against her better judgment, but a decision she would never regret.
“If it had not been for Jeanne, I might have missed the most incredible opportunity and the greatest love of my life,” recalled Thompson, who has since gone on to become an acclaimed, award-winning songwriter and television personality.
“I met Elvis that evening and we had an immediate connection, we were kindred spirits right off the bat. He changed my life forever and 46 years after his passing, it’s still amazing.”
She remembered during the screenings at the theatre that Elvis would sit by himself in his own row of seats. So when someone sat down beside her that night, she was surprised to see it was Elvis.
“I said, ‘Oh, to what do we owe the honour?’ And he said, ‘Ah, honey, I just wanted to sit here and get to know you a little bit better,’” said Linda.
“I thought that’s so friendly, he’s just being hospitable and then he started doing that old yawn and arm behind the seat and started snuggling against me and kissing me on the neck.”
Thinking he was still married, Linda elbowed her friend Jeanne in the ribs saying they needed to leave because he was “a married man.”
“Elvis heard me say that and he said, ‘Honey, I’m not married anymore,’” said Linda.
They stayed together for the next four-and-a-half years before she decided to separate from him eight months before his death in 1977.
Linda blamed his unfaithfulness and the events leading up to Presley’s death as her reasons for leaving the relationship.
It was reportedly Presley’s then nine-year-old daughter, the late Lisa Marie, who called her, telling Linda, “My daddy’s dead.”
Wanting a family of her own, nearly a year after Elvis’s passing, Linda met Caitlyn Jenner (formerly known as Bruce Jenner) and things began to change for the better, but that was also all too brief.
“I thought I had my normal,” said Linda about her marriage to Jenner from 1981 to 1986.
“I had the world’s greatest athlete, this sweet guy and we had two little boys together and I was living my happiest life in a normal world.”
All that changed one day when her husband said he had something to tell her.
“I thought he probably had an affair, that would have been the good news. But the bad news was that he had gender dysphoria,” she remembered. “That ripped my world apart for many years.”
Sometime after that music producer David Foster, “came riding into my life on a white horse and said I’ll save you.”
The pair were later married in 1991, a marriage which lasted until 2005.
During that time, the couple wrote many songs including the track, “I Have Nothing” for the 1992 Whitney Houston movie, ‘The Bodyguard,’ a song actually inspired by Thompson’s time with Elvis.
It reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and later received an Academy Award nomination for best original song.
In spite of her troubled relationships over the years, Thompson has remained true to her southern roots and Baptist upbringing.
The most important thing in her life?
“Nothing means more to me than being a good mother and now, a good grandmother,” she said.
“That is the most rewarding job in the world.”
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