"I hope I can love my daughter the way you loved me, the way you loved my brother and my sisters", read Ben Smith-Petersen, on his wife's behalf at the memorial.
Riley Keough is a mom. According to PEOPLE, during a memorial service for Lisa Marie Presley at Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 22, her husband, Ben Smith-Petersen, revealed that the couple is parents to a daughter while sharing a moving tribute on behalf of his wife. Smith-Petersen read the words of his wife, "I hope I can love my daughter the way you loved me, the way you loved my brother and my sisters. Thank you for giving me strength, heart, my empathy, my courage, my sense of humor, my manners, my temper, my wildness, my tenacity. I'm a product of your heart, my sisters are a product of your heart, my brother is a product of your heart."
Smith-Petersen, who married 33-year-old Keough eight years ago, did not give any further details. A rep for Keough had confirmed to PEOPLE that the couple welcomed a baby girl in 2022. Keough, the daughter of the late Presley and musician Danny Keough, met Smith-Petersen while filming Mad Max: Fury Road in 2012. The two met briefly on the set but didn't start dating until a year later while doing re-shoots in Australia.
Keough wrote in a 2022 essay for Vogue Australia, "My husband is such a good person. He's calm and loyal and strong and sensitive. He's my best friend." Their romance moved quickly as Keough and the Australian stuntman announced their engagement in 2014. Smith-Petersen posted a picture on Facebook, of Keough wearing a diamond ring and captioned it, "So that happened." The couple said their vows in February 2015. Keough and Smith-Petersen got married in Nepal, as the pair were building a school there, not long ago from their stateside nuptials.
"The families knew we were getting married and they said, 'Let us throw you a Hindu wedding,' " Keough recalled in her Vogue Australia essay. "It was so beautiful and, in some ways, that wedding was a little more intimate and really special. That wedding, I cried. At my bigger wedding, I was a little nervous, I wasn't as present. But it was still equally as amazing." The couple with matching tattoos got married again in Napa Valley, California, on February 4, 2015.
The parenting news comes after Keough shared a black-and-white picture of herself as a young girl with her mother, on Instagram. She added a simple caption in her first public statement since her mother, the only child of rock legend Elvis Presley, died: "❤️," she wrote.
Presley died on January 12 after being rushed to a Los Angeles hospital for cardiac arrest. She was 54. Presley is survived by her mother, actress, and businesswoman Priscilla Presley, 77; and twins Finley and Harper Lockwood, 14. Her death was preceded by the death of her son Benjamin Keough, who died by suicide at age 27 in 2020.
References:
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Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Frazer Harrison
