14 DAY TRIAL // As Matt Lauer puts it, it was a mystery that plagued women’s minds for the past 55 years: who is the woman that’s flirting and kissing Elvis Presley in the iconic photo known simply as “The Kiss”? The mystery has now been solved: her name is Barbara Grey.
Back in the day when Elvis was still a young, struggling singer looking for due recognition, he and Barbara (who, back then, was going by the name of Bobbi Owens) talked on the phone and arranged a meeting in Richmond, Virginia.
Elvis was supposed to perform two gigs at the Mosque Theater but, before he got there, he met with Bobbi. Photographer Alfred Wertheimer was also with them, as he’d been assigned to do a story on the singer.
Both Barbara and Alfred met again after 55 years when Vanity Fair magazine went and did some digging on the mysterious woman in “The Kiss.”
They never had the chance to be properly introduced that day they spent with the future King of Rock’n’Roll, they tell Lauer, as the video below will confirm.
The photographer recalls that, at one point, he realized he had lost Elvis – and frantically started to look for him. He eventually found him on a narrow corridor, with Barbara and they were flirting and kissing.
He thought he might as well take his picture, thinking that “the worst that can happen is that he’ll ask me to leave.”
When Presley died years later, Time magazine called the photographer and made an offer on whatever pictures he had of the star, those with Barbara included.
She, on the other hand, tells Lauer that she didn’t feel especially attracted to Elvis, adding that there were sparks only on his side.
After the date, she got a Christmas card from him and then never heard from him again.
“Maybe he had sparks, but I never even knew who he was. I got a Christmas card from him once, but that was it. Shortly after that, I left the state, so I don’t know if he tried to reach me or not,” she says.
Watch the video below to see how Barbara met the King and more of the photos taken that day.