In an interview with ‘The Wall Street Journal’ magazine, the American football player explains how the singer’s entourage helped him get to her and how they share the same values in their family and in their jobs
The unofficial story of the romance of the season, the one known so far, sounded like something out of a movie: Travis Kelce liked Taylor Swift and when, last July, she came to sing at Arrowhead Stadium, where he plays with the Kansas City Chiefs, he wanted to give her one of the bracelets that the singer’s fans make for her concerts. The bracelet, instead of a song title, had his phone number on it. But he failed in the attempt: she is very reserved after her shows and he was not able to give her the bracelet. Nevertheless, the story reached Swift’s ears, who was amused by the anecdote, and decided to meet the American football player. Now, some four months later, they have become the couple of the season. And it has also come to light that the story wasn’t quite like that.
Because Travis Kelce, 34, has given a lengthy interview to The Wall Street Journal — he graces the cover of their December/January magazine, due out December 9 — in which he talks openly about the singer, their relationship, how they met and how they’re doing right now. In the interview with J. R. Moehringer — author of tennis player Andre Agassi’s memoirs and, more recently, of Prince Harry’s — Kelce opens up candidly about their famous romance. While Swift and her entourage are extremely secretive about her private life — she hasn’t given interviews for years —, Kelce has taken advantage of this moment of popularity to sit down in front of the cameras and chat calmly, and as naturally as he does in front of the microphones of his own weekly podcast, New Heights, which he hosts with his brother, fellow American football player Jason Kelce. It is a long chat in which he states that he is a shy man of few words. “Being around her, seeing how smart Taylor is, has been f***ing mind-blowing. I’m learning every day,” he says.
“There were definitely people she knew that knew who I was, in her corner [who said]: Yo! Did you know he was coming? I had somebody playing Cupid,” the athlete tells the magazine about what that first contact was like in July. Even the singer’s family lent him a hand. “She’ll probably hate me for saying this, but… when she came to Arrowhead, they gave her the big locker room as a dressing room, and her little cousins were taking pictures… in front of my locker,” he said. The singer herself told him all of this later, because she was the one who contacted the player directly. One day, he found that the artist had sent him a text message, and it had all been thanks to that “Cupid,” as he calls that person, a woman: “She told me exactly what was going on and how I got lucky enough to get her to reach out.”
