For more than a decade, every time Ann-Margret opened a new show in Las Vegas, the same gift was waiting for her—a floral arrangement, always shaped like a guitar, always from the same man. There was never any confusion about who sent it. Then on the night of August 15, 1977, she walked in for her opening at the Hilton — and for the first time in ten years, the flowers weren’t there.
She knew immediately that something was terribly wrong. That is how Ann-Margret found out Elvis Presley was dying.
To understand what those flowers meant, you have to go back to 1963 and the set of Viva Las Vegas. Ann-Margret wasn’t just another actress cast beside the King. The press already called her “the female Elvis” — she was a genuine star, and she remains the only co-star ever to share top billing with him on a film. When they met, something happened that neither of them expected. In her own words: “We both felt a current, an electricity that went straight through us.”
They had almost everything in common. Both grew up in tiny places far from Hollywood — she was born in a Swedish village of about 160 people. Both loved motorcycles, both were deeply private, both were shy off-camera and wild the second the music started. He called her “Thumper.” She called him “E.P.”
Elvis Presley’s True Love: Why He Sent Ann-Margret Flowers Even After His Death
Elvis’s own cousin, Billy Smith, said something telling about her: she made no demands on him and understood who he was. Elvis knew pink was her favorite color, so he had a round pink bed made for her apartment.
Ann-Margret has said plainly that Elvis wanted to marry her — that “his wish was that we could stay together.” But it couldn’t survive what surrounded him. Colonel Parker pushed hard against it, a story about the two of them getting engaged hit the papers, and there was already a young woman, Priscilla, waiting for him back home. The romance ended. In 1967, within months of each other, they both married someone else. She married actor Roger Smith. Elvis married Priscilla.
And this is the part that stays with people. He never stopped sending the flowers. Not after the breakup. Not after her wedding. Not after his own. For roughly ten years, every single Vegas opening night, the guitar-shaped arrangement arrived from Elvis Presley — a quiet message from a man who couldn’t be in the room, telling her he still remembered.
Ann Margret Talks About Elvis
Until the night they didn’t come. The next morning, the phone call came from Graceland. Elvis’s friend Joe Esposito warned her the funeral in Memphis would be an absolute madhouse and gently told her not to come. Her answer was two words: “We’re coming.” She and Roger flew to Memphis. When she reached Graceland, she and Elvis’s father Vernon held each other and wept. Then Vernon said something to her she never forgot: “He was so proud of you.” She flew home to her husband afterward — and stayed married to him for 50 years, until his death, calling him the love of her life.