On September 23, 2023, Taylor Swift shocked the world when she turned up at Arrowhead Stadium, announcing her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs star Travis Kelce to the NFL and beyond as she sat alongside his mother, Donna.
Since then, things have moved swiftly with Taylor and Travis have ruled the NFL and entertainment worlds over the past nine months.
However, their relationship started before that fateful day in Kansas City – two months before to be exact. In fact, it can be traced back to a year ago today.
In her life, Taylor has accomplished things way greater than dating the boy on the football team, but that hasn’t meant her relationship with Travis hasn’t dominated headlines for the best part of a year. And all it took was one little friendship bracelet. Well, almost.
One year ago, on July 8, 2024, Travis attended Taylor’s Eras Tour at Arrowhead with a friendship bracelet and a dream.
Despite being in the stands instead of on the field at his home stadium for once, Travis clung on to hope that he would be able to get up close and personal to the pop superstar. He made a friendship bracelet, participating in the Swifties’ tradition of making them for the tour in honor of a lyric from her song ‘You’re On Your Own, Kid.’ Except his came with a twist – his phone number.
There were signs he had even been plotting even before the concert with the NFL sharing a video of Travis making friendship bracelets for his Tight End University about a week before.
But his hopes were dashed when he discovered Taylor doesn’t meet anyone before the show in order to save her vocal chords for the marathon of songs she performs.
‘I was disappointed that she doesn’t talk before or after her shows because she has to save her voice for the 44 songs that she sings,’ Kelce said during a July episode of his New Heights podcast, which he cohosts with his brother, Jason Kelce. ‘So I was a little butt-hurt I didn’t get to hand her one of the bracelets I made for her.’
He added, ‘She doesn’t meet anybody, or at least she didn’t want to meet me, so I took it personal.’
However, fortunately for Travis, Taylor – or more likely someone in her camp – took pity on him and his efforts and the two are said to have begun dating but kept their blossoming romance very much under wraps.
In early September, while NFL broadcasters made countless Taylor-related puns on coverage of Travis’s games, the tight end remained coy, shutting down questions about his personal life.
It went from zero to 100, however, when the songstress stole the show at her NFL debut later that month.
Taylor admitted during her interview with TIME Magazine in December that they only went public with their relationship after dating for some time behind the scenes.
‘This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,’ she said.
‘We started hanging out right after that. 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.’
The couple were captured driving off into the sunset, Travis’s convertible acting as their getaway car. But the hard launch was just the beginning. It opened the floodgates to the NFL’s season of Swift.
The following week the Chiefs traveled to the Big Apple for a clash with the Jets – a billing that had been hyped by the NFL all week with Taylor’s hit, ‘Welcome to New York.’ And sure enough, it was waiting for her – well, MetLife Stadium was.
Taylor and her A-List posse of Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Sophie Turner and others watched the reigning Super Bowl champions topple the Jets. The news week the routine continued, this time Taylor, wearing a Chiefs retro-style jacket designed by NFL reporter Erin Andrews, was pictured cheering along Brittany Mahomes, the wife of Chiefs quarterback Patrick, sparking the beginning of a friendship.
On Saturday October 14, Taylor and Travis took their relationship to the next level: Off the field. The new couple made a surprise appearance at Saturday Night Live in New York. The A-list couple grabbed a meal at Nobu before making cameos during the 49th season premiere episode of the program. They then packed on the PDA at the cast afterparty, kissing and getting ‘handsy’ with one another.
After several weeks of supporting her NFL beau, it was time for Taylor to return to the spotlight, resuming her Eras Tour with the South American leg, and for Travis to take over the supportive partner duties.
During the Chiefs’ bye week, the Super Bowl winner made the trek down to Buenos Aires, Argentina to see his girlfriend perform in front of a sold-out crowd. It marked the first time Taylor switched the lyrics of her finale song, Karma, to ‘Karma is the guy on the Chiefs,’ in a sweet nod to her boyfriend which has become a tradition every time he is in the building for a show – like a Tayvis equivalent of the Royal Standard flying when a monarch is home.
Once she wrapped up her final shows in South America, Taylor returned to cheerleading in Green Bay on December 3 with the ‘Anti-Hero hitmaker’ appearing to have borrowed a red teddy coat from Brittany Mahomes to brace the frigid temperatures. This is when the NFL’s Swiftmania really took off.
Taylor attended every single remaining game in the Chiefs’ run into the postseason, including an appearance at Foxborough with her Philadelphia Eagles fan dad, Scott, the Christmas Day disaster against the Las Vegas Raiders, and New Year’s Eve clash against the Cincinnati Bengals.
With every game she attended, Taylor began to wear her heart more and more on her sleeve – literally. On Christmas, she wore a Santa hat with Travis’s No. 87 stitched into the fur and begun to wear friendship bracelets and more jewelry with his number on, until it culminated in her and Brittany’s now-infamous matching puffer jackets designed by San Francisco 49ers WAG Kristin Juszczyk on January 13.
However, around this time, the pressure began mounting on Taylor. As the Chiefs’ record began to slump, fans and analysts began inexplicably pointing the finger at the 14-time Grammy Award winner.
Travis, Taylor and Kansas City, though, shook it off with head coach Andy Reid and his players denying the furor around the singer’s support was a distraction. The Chiefs carried on in style, making the playoffs, beating the Miami Dolphins in the wild card round and setting up a clash against the Buffalo Bills in the divisional round.
It was at Highmark on January 21 that Taylor met Travis’ brother, now-retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason, and his wife Kylie. Despite being told by Kylie to be on his best behavior around Taylor, a shirtless Jason hilariously downed beers and jumped out of the VIP suite into the crowd of fans.
But the piece de la resistance came at the season finale. Taylor lived up to the Super Bowl billing by hopping on a private jet immediately after finishing a show in Tokyo and jetting to Las Vegas, via Los Angeles, to watch her man hoist the Lombardi Trophy with a Chiefs’ overtime victory.
The couple embraced on the Allegiant Stadium field amid a shower of red and gold confetti in fairytale scenes before partying the night away on the Sin City strip.
The offseason has been a whirlwind of Eras Tour shows with Travis following his girlfriend across the world to Australia and Singapore, vacations in the Bahamas, Coachella and a romantic getaway in Lake Como, which sparked engagement rumors.
On April 19, Taylor celebrated the release of her latest album, ‘The Tortured Poets Department’, which gifted fans with songs, ‘So High School’ and ‘The Alchemy’, which are believed to have been written about Travis.
On May 9, Taylor kickstarted the European leg of her Eras Tour in Paris featuring a snippet of ‘So High School’ as she performed ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ segment for the first time, which included choreography inspired by Travis’s touchdown celebrations and the Chiefs’ ‘Swag Surf’.
The three-time Super Bowl winner attended all three of Taylor’s concerts at Wembley last month and was joined by Jason and Kylie who watched the ‘Blank Space’ icon perform for the first time. However, the box office moment came on night three of the run.
Travis stunned 90,000 fans by walking out on stage and joining backup dancers Kameron Saunders and Jan Ravnik for the pantomime skit during Taylor’s outfit change for ‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.’
On New Heights last week, Travis revealed: ‘I initially mentioned it to Tay but was like ‘How funny would it be if I rolled out on one of the bikes for the 1989 era,’ and she started laughing and was like ‘Would you seriously be up for doing something like that?’
‘I was just like, ‘what? I would love to do that, are you kidding me?’ I’ve seen the show enough, might as well put me to work here.
‘Sure enough she found the perfect part of the show for me to come in. No bike in case I ran into somebody else or hit one of the dancers. It was the safest option.’
Travis continued the grand gestures of love the following by surprising his superstar girlfriend. He jetted over to Dublin following a teammate’s Stateside wedding to once again set up camp in the VIP, eliciting an overjoyed, shocked expression from Taylor when she clocked him in the crowd.
The past 12 months have proven that Travis Kelce is truly the king of manifestation. From one friendship bracelet has spawned an incredible Love Story.
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