Shortly before the 2023 NFL season kicked off, rumors emerged suggesting Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce was in a relationship with billionaire musician Taylor Swift.
The latter confirmed the rumors when she made a surprise appearance at a Chiefs home game against the Chicago Bears in September 2023. Conventional wisdom put their relationship start date round then, but a new comment from Kelce's neighbor appears to reveal when the relationship actually started.
Reality TV star Wes Bergmann, who lives in the same gated community as Kelce, according to the Daily Mail, spotted Swift months ahead of their rumored relationship beginnings.
Taylor Swift celebrates with Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs after defeating the Buffalo Bills 32-29 in the AFC Championship Game at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on January 26, 2025 in Kansas City, MO.
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"He's an enigma - on one hand, he's like this big, tough football player," Bergmann said on the RHAP podcast with Michele Fitzgerald and Kellie Nalbandian last month. "On the other, he's going to have about 12 Taylor Swift songs written about him."
"Okay and on that note, I was like the first person to know about any of this stuff. And I tried to tell this woman [podcast host Fitzgerald] a long time ago 'they are together, just so you know' and she didn't believe it!"
"She loves a brooding artist. Scrawnier, they're kind of like womanizers. And then you have him who seems chivalrous, a football player and he has just been winning and crushing," she said.
In an interview with Time in December 2023, Swift admitted to "hanging out" with Kelce not long after he put her on blast on his podcast, "New Heights," calling her out for not reciprocating his friendship bracelet request.
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND - JANUARY 28: Travis Kelce #87 of the Kansas City Chiefs (L) celebrates with Taylor Swift after defeating the Baltimore Ravens in the AFC Championship Game at M&T Bank Stadium on January 28, 2024 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Patrick Smith/Getty Images)
"This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” she said in the interview. "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."
She admitted the Chiefs-Bears game in September 2023 wasn't their first date.
"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 said.
While the couple kept their romance under wraps for a while, they're hard pressed to enjoy a private outing these days.
