Travis Kelce Praises Taylor Swift’s “Unbelievable” Eras Tour
The Tortured Poets Department may be nominated for five Grammys, but it's Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's mutual admiration society that's made for the most winning collaboration of the year.
Over the course of their togetherness, Taylor and Travis have turned supporting each other into a spectator sport, fans anxiously scanning the crowd in stadiums all over the world for the S.O. of whoever is performing at any given time, be it on a stage or a field.
"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,” Taylor told TIME a year ago when the magazine named her Person of the Year. "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 where is the fun—let alone the normalcy—in that?
Though Taylor was in the home stretch of her historic Eras Tour this fall, she has made it to six Kansas City Chiefs games so far—almost as many as she had attended at this point last season, her first dating the boy on the football team.
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For his part, Travis ultimately caught 14 of her shows, even playing a supporting role June 23 in London before he had to report to training camp.
And while there's a tidy sum to be made trading in "Go Taylor's Boyfriend" merch, the 6-foot-5 tight end has taken his secondary moniker in stride—"It's the life I chose," he said in September—as his Chiefs piled up the wins en route to what will be their 10th straight playoff appearance.
With the team's ninth consecutive AFC West division title already secured, the most hotly anticipated stat Dec. 15 will be whether Taylor shows up at Cleveland's Huntington Bank Field to see if this great NFL dynasty notches lucky win No. 13 against the Browns, less than 20 miles away from where Travis grew up.
If she does attend, it'll be her first away game of the 2024 season, the security logistics just easier when she sticks to her suite at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo.
And now that the Eras Tour is over, Taylor having taken her final bow Dec. 8 in Vancouver, all eyes will be on whether the 35-year-old is more consistently by Travis' side—and vice versa—going forward.
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Not that she needs to be, or should be. But seeing as how the couple's entire love story to date has unfolded while Taylor was on her 21-month, $2.2 billion-grossing musical odyssey, shippers will be anxious to see if the alchemy holds.
An inevitability she knows all too well. Yet in any case, it was the Eras Tour that brought them together in the first place.
Travis nursed a crush on Taylor for who knows how long beforehand, but it was in July 2023 that the athlete was denied a chance to give the singer his phone number via friendship bracelet during her tour's stop in Kansas City. However, he was able to talk about being thwarted on his and brother Jason Kelce's New Heights podcast afterward.
Taylor deemed Travis making his intentions known to millions of people "metal as hell," telling TIME, "We started hanging out right after that."
A year and a half later, their feelings have yet to calm down.
Marveling over the "f--k ton" of shows Taylor played, Travis said on the Dec. 11 New Heights, "It’s insane. Absolutely insane. Over 10 million people in the stands over the course of it, like cumulatively. It’s pretty crazy."
And having received an up-close-and-personal view of how the production came together night after night, Travis was giving an expert opinion when he deemed it "the best tour in the world because of a lot of people."
He quickly added, "And mostly because of Taylor."
In the meantime, Taylor has been welcomed into Travis' family fold—it's Jason and parents Ed Kelce and Donna Kelce who've fielded the most questions about their relationship—while her mom Andrea Swift, dad Scott Swift and brother Austin Swift joined her for the Chiefs' Christmas game last year.
And the Kelces seem to be anticipating another cozy holiday, Ed advising anyone who's planning to give Taylor a gift to "dig down and come up with something special."
"The amount of money is meaningless," Travis' dad said on the Dec. 12 episode of the Baskin & Phelps podcast. "You're not going to crush Taylor Swift with a gift that cost, you know, $100,000."
He continued, "Get something that tweaks the strings of her heart that you spend 10 bucks on and then she'll just be all gooey."
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Jason also got the memo that "something sentimental" would be best for Travis' girlfriend, who's known for her generosity and the personal touches she puts on carefully curated presents.
"I think a macaroni necklace," he said with a smile on Jimmy Kimmel Live. "It works on me with my kids very well."
And if macaroni friendship necklaces become the new trend, Jason is happy to take full credit.
So whether it's gonna be forever or not is beside the point.
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Travis and Taylor have lifted each other up in the sweetest of ways, while also building a bridge between two seemingly disparate fandoms.
"It could last a week. It could last a year," NFL commentator Greg Olsen remarked on Erin Andrews' and Charissa Thompson's Calm Down podcast in October 2023 as Taylor mania took hold across the league. "They could marry each other for 50 years. I don't know, but whatever this is, it's amazing."
Astute analysis, as always.
So while Taylor and Travis are focusing on their own game plan, go back to the beginning to see their first play and every yard they've gained along the way: