After endless rumors, speculation and countless camera pans to Taylor Swift cheering on Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce from the family skybox over the past few months, the singer finally opened up about her relationship with the NFL star in an interview for Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year cover story.
“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell… We started hanging out right after that,” Swift said of a July 26 episode of Kelce’s New Heights podcast in which he recounted his failed attempt to woo the singer by making a special friendship bracelet for the July 9 Eras Tour show he attended at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City.
“So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other. By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple.
I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date,” she continued in one of her first in-depth interviews in four years.
Kelce said at the time that he was “butt hurt” that Swift doesn’t speak to anyone before or after the shows to preserve her voice. “She doesn’t meet anybody, or at least she didn’t want to meet me, so I took it personal,” he said on the pod.
They did, obviously, meet soon after and Swift described how they’ve shown up for each other in the months since, with Taylor attending half a dozen Chiefs games and Kelce flying down to Buenos Aires, Argentina on Nov. 11 during a bye week to see another Eras gig.
“When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” she said in the first official public confirmation of their relationship.
“The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”
