Travis Kelce‘s relationship with Taylor Swift feels more like the 1989 deep cut “You Are in Love” than the camera-flashing chaos of “Blank Space.” When asked how they keep their romance alive while navigating being in the public eye, the Kansas City Chiefs player told GQ, “Whenever I’m with her, it feels like we’re just regular people. When there is not a camera on us, we’re just two people that are in love.”
Kelce and Swift began dating in 2023, when he was fresh off of his team’s Super Bowl LVII win and Swift was in the early months of the career-spanning Eras Tour. Some believed they witnessed the couple hard-launch their relationship when Swift attended a Chiefs game after being publicly courted by Kelce, but of course, they had been dating privately for a while before then. “It can be perceived as something else because of how much it is talked about and how much we are tracked whenever we do go out,” Kelce said. “It happened very organically, even though from a media standpoint it was being tracked. It still happened very organically.”
He added, “Nothing I’ve ever done has been a controlled, organized process. When I say it was so organic, we fell in love just based off the people we were sitting in a room together with. We are two fun-loving people who have the morals to appreciate everyone for who they are. We share all those values. It kind of just took the fuck off.”
Their mutual understanding of how to navigate the media landscape is something Kelce values in their relationship. “I hadn’t experienced somebody in the same shoes as me, having a partner who understands the scrutiny, understands the ups and downs of being in front of millions,” he said. There was also overlap in the physical demands of their respective careers. “That was very relatable, seeing how exhausted she would get after shows,” Kelce added. “She may not think of herself as an athlete. She will never tell anyone that she is an athlete. But I’ve seen what she goes through. I’ve seen the amount of work that she puts on her body, and it’s mind-blowing.”
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Kelce managed to catch a few shows on the Eras Tour, waiting in the wings as Swift tweaked her lyrics to shout out “the guy on the Chiefs, coming straight home to me.” He even joined her onstage in London as a dancer during “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” He’s witnessed firsthand how grueling those three-hour-long shows could be.
“To go out on a stage, on a computer, essentially, for three hours. The [Eras Tour] floor is literally—I’ve seen underneath that thing. It is a football-field-sized computer,” Kelce said. “You take that into Singapore, where it is scorching hot, and all of a sudden you’re feeling the fumes from the computer and you’re feeling the fumes from the sun and you’re doing a show for three hours with a lot of energy, bringing it every single song. That is arguably more exhausting than how much I put in on a Sunday, and she’s doing it three, four, five days in a row.”
Swift has been to her fair share of Chiefs games, now, too. “I sort of made her a football fan,” Kelce said. “She is the most engulfed fan now. She knows what the injury reports look like. She understands what special situations are, third and short—all these things because she just naturally loves to hear about my job.” He enjoys the balance of showing up for each other. “I get to be the plus one,” he said. “I get to go and be that fan. Because I am a fan. I’m a fan of music. I’m a fan of art. And it’s so cool that I get to experience her being that plus one for me on the football field…. I feel that same enjoyment every time she comes to my shows.”
Kelce is also learning the dynamism of performance from Swift. “Whenever I get in front of a crowd, I feel like I’ve got to be like, ‘Woooo!’ Like, excited, bringing the energy. Then I saw that coolness and that calmness and that relatability that she is so good at presenting,” he said. “I really grabbed that. Like, man, I can use that side of entertainment as well. It’s not just always being the guy that brings the energy and creates these exciting moments.”
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“People gravitate towards how she performs and how she makes it feel like the entire stadium is in this little room with her,” he continued. “She is so good at mesmerizing everybody and making everybody feel like it’s an intimate situation. I think that alone — there is so much calm and coolness. She’s beautiful. She’s up there making everyone feel at ease.”
Later this week, Swift will appear alongside Kelce as a special guest on New Heights, the podcast he hosts with his brother Jason Kelce. In the teaser for the episode, the singer-songwriter announced her 12th studio album, The Life of a Showgirl. Kicking off the rollout together, Kelce is getting another look into how Swift is always “setting goals for herself and exceeding the expectations and really captivating the world in that regard.”
