Lisa Marie’s marriage to Michael Jackson and THAT awkward kiss at the MTV Awards

In 1994, the King of Pop married the heir to the rock and roll kingdom, and the two great houses of modern music came together, if only for a brief and bizarre period.

The relationship between Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley – the only daughter of the King himself, Elvis Presley – spanned Jackson’s child molestation charges and a forced wedding in the Dominican Republic, including one of the most awkward kisses on television and videos. MTV’s weirdest musicals, and was hounded by skeptics until it was dissolved in divorce in 1996.

The couple met when Presley was just a child and a lover of Jackson’s music, but she wouldn’t become his lover until they reunited nearly two decades later.

Many accused the couple of marrying to distract the world from the damning accusations against Jackson, but the couple always maintained their authenticity, and Presley insisted that Jackson was haunted by their dissolution until the day he died.

Presley was a fan of the Jackson 5 as a child, and when she was seven, her father took her backstage at one of Jackson’s concerts to meet the singer.

A Jackson employee told People magazine in 1994 that Presley “has known Michael almost his entire life” and that the two “kept in touch” after their first meeting.

Their friendship was rekindled in 1992 after they met again in Los Angeles. Presley was married at the time to musician Danny Keough, with whom she had two children.

In 1993, when Jackson was accused of sexually abusing 13-year-old Jordan Chandler, he and Presley spoke regularly on the phone, and she became his support system during the investigation and his publicity.

During one such phone call, Jackson reportedly asked Presley if she would marry him if he asked.

“Michael valued Lisa’s calming effect on him so much so that during their phone conversation, he posed a question that surprised them both,” biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli wrote. “If I asked you to marry me, would you?” … Without missing a beat, she replied: ‘I would,’ she wrote.

Presley’s six-year marriage to Keough was falling apart at the time, and months later, in May 1994, she and Jackson flew to the Dominican Republic to escape the press and elope.

There, Presley filed for a quick divorce from Keough, and she and Jackson were married in a fifteen-minute ceremony. They both wore black, and Jackson donned a cowboy hat and a bolo tie.

The couple kept their marriage under wraps all summer as rumors swirled, until Presley finally confirmed it in a statement in August.

‘My married name is Mrs. Lisa Marie Presley-Jackson. My marriage to Michael Jackson took place in a private ceremony outside of the United States weeks ago,” she said.

I am very much in love with Michael. I dedicate my life to being his wife. I understand and support it. We are both looking forward to starting a family.

A month later, she and Jackson opened the MTV Video Music Awards together. Walking out onto the stage hand in hand, Jackson paused to let the crowd’s cheers die down.

“Welcome to the MTV Video Music Awards,” he said. Then, waiting another moment for the applause to die down again, she said with a no to Presley: ‘I’m so happy to be here. Just think, no one thought this would last.

He then planted a small kiss on his wife’s lips and pulled her close as the crowd went wild. They then left the stage.

As the couple continued to make public appearances together throughout 1994 and 1995, rumors began to circulate that they were not having sex with each other.

They addressed the whispers in June 1995 during an interview with Diane Sawyer.

‘Shall we have sex?’ said Presley, and together she and Jackson exclaimed ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’ They added that they intended to have children together.

As if to accentuate his sexual stance, a month later, Jackson released the music video for You Are Not Alone, which featured him and Presley making out, soaked and naked, in some sort of desert temple.

Rumors about the status of their marriage continued to plague the couple throughout 1995, finally paying off when they split in December of that year.

A month later, Presley filed for divorce, citing “irreconcilable differences”.

However, the two attempted to reconcile in the late ’90s, with Presley traveling the world to be with Jackson on occasion, and the pair occasionally hanging out together during Jackson’s world tours.

Jackson eventually married nurse Debbie Rowe in 1996, with whom he would have two children before divorcing in 2000, and Presley married actor Nicholas Cage in 2002.

In 2003, Presley told Rolling Stone that she became involved with Jackson out of a desire to save him during his early child molestation charges.

“You get sucked into ‘Poor misunderstood person, you…’ I’m a fool for that,” she said. ‘I got into all this, ‘I’m going to save you.’

Speaking to Oprah after Jackson’s death, she said caring for Jackson was one of the “high points” of her life.

“I loved taking care of him,” she said. “It was one of the high points of my life when things were going really well, and he and I were close. It was a very profound moment in my life.’