New era for Taylor, Travis: They’re engaged!
It started with a friendship bracelet. It ended with an engagement ring.
Taylor Swift, the pop superstar, and Travis Kelce, the football champion, are engaged.
The fiances, both 35, announced the news in a joint post on Instagram on Tuesday. It is the latest chapter in the couple’s love story, one that has spanned two years, two Super Bowls, an album announcement, and the highest-grossing tour of all time.
It was way back in July 2023 that Kelce attended Swift’s Eras concert at Arrowhead Stadium, where the Chiefs play.
After, on his “New Heights” podcast with brother Jason Kelce, he professed to being disappointed—his word was “butthurt”—that he couldn’t meet Swift and present her with a bracelet with his phone number on it.
Soon, Kelce revealed he’d invited Swift to a game at Arrowhead. “I threw the ball in her court,” he said on another talk show.
‘Pretty ballsy’
Swift took Kelce up on his offer, appearing for all the world to see at the Chiefs-Bears game, cheering next to his mom, Donna Kelce.
It was the launch of a long series of appearances by Swift at Chiefs games. There was some online angst over whether Swift was distracting from football—while the NFL itself capitalized on her fandom.
And now it was time for Kelce to be the adoring fan. In November 2023, after a hiatus of two months, Swift brought her tour to Argentina, where she changed the lyrics of “Karma” to salute her beau. “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs, coming straight home to me,” she sang.
When Time magazine announced its person of the year, few were surprised. In the Time interview, Swift spoke about her relationship.
“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” Swift said, adding that they’d already been a couple before that first Chiefs game cameo.
At the AFC (American Football Conference) championship game, the couple made it clear they were fine with whatever attention was coming their way. In the middle of the field in Baltimore, after the Chiefs beat the Ravens, Swift and Kelce kissed.
“I love you,” Kelce said. “So much it’s not funny.”
‘Rewriting history books’
In one week of February 2024, Swift attended the Grammys in Los Angeles, jetted to Tokyo for four concerts, then jumped back onto her private plane to make the Super Bowl with time to spare. To get there, she crossed nine time zones and the international dateline.
“She’s rewriting the history books herself,” Kelce said a day after the Grammys, where Swift had won album of the year for a record fourth time. “I told her I’ll have to hold up my end of the bargain and come home with hardware, too.”
And he did. The two kissed on the field again after the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers, Swift in her “87” necklace.
In June, during a celebrity-packed set of concerts in London, Kelce made his Eras stage debut, donning a tuxedo and top hat and carrying Swift in his arms during a choreographed bit before “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”
‘Getting married’
A couple that collaborates together, stays together.
Swift announced her highly anticipated 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” in mid-August and included Kelce in the rollout.
In the two-hour “New Heights” episode of the Kelce brothers featuring Swift, Swift credited the podcast for getting her a boyfriend.
“This is sort of what I’ve been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager,” she said of their romance.
And Kelce credited the tour for, well, getting him a girlfriend.
“I see you on that stage and see how you can get an entire stadium going, and then I get you in a room and it’s like I’ve known you forever,” he said. “It’s the easiest conversation I ever had, and it was just so much fun that it knocked my socks off.”
In late August, in a five-photo carousel shared to both Swift and Kelce’s official Instagram accounts, the couple announced their engagement.
“Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” she wrote in her caption.
It’s unclear when and where the two got engaged.
