Marian Cocke, who spent more than two years as Elvis Presley’s nurse before his death in 1977, has died. She was 98.
Cocke was remembered in a tribute shared to Instagram by Priscilla Presley, who was married to the musician from 1967 to 1973.
“Marian you will be greatly missed. Your spirit touched many people and especially Elvis. You were the person that he always counted on. Thank you for always taking care of him,” Presley wrote in an accompanying caption, adding a rose emoji.
The actress, 79, shared her message alongside a photo of her and Cocke with her late daughter Lisa Marie Presley, who died in January 2023.
Cocke detailed her time with The King in a 1979 book titled I Called Him Babe: Elvis Presley’s Nurse Remembers. In the book, Cocke said she was a nursing supervisor at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis when Presley was first admitted to her care in January 1975.
In an interview conducted in the mid-2000s, Cocke said she “was never an Elvis fan” before she met the star, and treated his arrival — which was arranged by his doctor, George “Dr. Nick” Nichopoulos — like “any other Joe that was coming in the hospital.”
When she met him for the first time, Presley was “sitting on the side of the bed, [then-girlfriend] Linda Thompson was shaving him, and [road manager] Joe Esposito and [father] Vernon and [head of security] Dick Grob and one other guy… were sitting there.”
Presley spent about three weeks in the hospital under Cocke’s care, and the nurse did not see her celebrity patient again until he was admitted to the hospital for a second time that August.
“When he came back the second time, he wanted me to stay the night,” she recalled. “I stayed in the room across the hall. If he wanted anything, he’d come in and shake my shoulders. And most of the time it was, ‘I can’t sleep, would you get up and talk to me?’ And I’d get up, put my robe on and sit in the sitting room with him.”
After Presley left Baptist Memorial for a second time, Nichopoulos asked Cocke to become the star’s nurse at Graceland, where responsibilities would include monitoring his blood pressure and medications.
Cocke said she ultimately stayed at Graceland with Presley over a two-and-a-half year period, and only left due to her mother’s terminal illness. She said she refused to accept payment from Presley, though the star did give her a “beautiful white Pontiac.”
“He was too giving. That was a major fault he had,” she said. “He cared more about giving and helping over people than he did himself.”
Presley died in August 1977 at age 42.
In her memoir, Cocke wrote that the last time she ever saw the “Jailhouse Rock” singer, they shared a sweet hug and he told her, “Miss Cocke, I just want you to know the doors of this house will always be open for you,” according to the New York Post.
Read the full article here
