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Riley Keough Honors Grandfather Elvis and Late Brother in Her Daughter’s Name Reveal
Riley Keough revealed the name of her daughter one year after she and husband Ben Smith-Petersen welcomed the little one via surrogate and it pays a sweet tribute to her rock legend grandfather, Elvis. Everyone, say hi to baby girl Tupelo Storm Smith-Petersen!
The Daisy Jones and the Six actress, 34, named her daughter after the late King of Rock ‘N’ Roll’s birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi.
“It’s funny because we picked her name before the Elvis movie,” she revealed in an August interview. “I was like, ‘This is great because it’s not really a well-known word or name in relation to my family — it’s not like Memphis or something. Then when the Elvis movie came out, it was like, Tupelo this and Tupelo that. I was like, ‘Oh, no.’ But it’s fine.”
In addition to honoring Elvis in her daughter’s name, she also paid homage to her brother, Benjamin Storm Keough, by giving the little one his middle name.
Benjamin died by suicide in 2020. Riley’s mother, Lisa Marie Presley, died three years later after suffering cardiac arrest.
Riley lives with Lyme disease and she is still in the process of going through a holistic healing journey in Switzerland. That being said, she chose to welcome a baby via surrogacy to ensure everyone’s health.
“I think it’s a very cool, selfless, and incredible act that these women do to help other people. I can carry children, but it felt like the best choice for what I had going on physically with the autoimmune stuff,” Riley continued.
Riley and Ben, 32, keep their daughter out of the public eye, but she shared that Tupelo looks like someone “shrunk” her husband and put him in the form of an infant. However, she got her momma’s genes in there and has her curly hair.
“This is the thing in my life so far that I have really wanted to, quote-unquote, get right. I don’t think you ever can be a perfect parent, but I would like to be the best mom for her that I can be,” Riley explained. “That’s … very important to me.”
Riley and Ben met on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road in 2012, but didn’t pursue a romantic relationship until they stopped filming. Once they did decide to give love a shot, their connection quickly progressed as they started living together two months later and got engaged after dating for six months.
The Zola starlet can’t help but gush over her actor and stuntman hubby in interviews and has previously admitted she knew Ben was “the One” all along.
“I don’t see the future, but I know certain things are going to happen,” she shared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in March 2023. “Like when I met my husband, he came out of the gas station on our second date and I thought, ‘I’m going to marry him and have kids with him.’ I just knew. We didn’t even say ‘I love you’ yet.”
