Travis Kelce Shares How His Taylor Swift Romance Began in First Big Interview

Travis Kelce kicked off Thanksgiving week by telling the beginning of his and Taylor Swift’s love story. In a new profile for WSJ magazine, Kelce didn’t shy away from sharing a generous amount of information about how he and Swift came to be the power couple they are.

Kelce picked up the story from July when he went to her Eras tour concert at Kansas City, Missouri’s Arrowhead Stadium and tried to give Swift a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it. He had been blocked by security, then said someone on Swift’s team helped him.

“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,” he said, though he didn’t give away the person’s identity.

Kelce revealed he didn’t know it then, but Swift ended up getting his number and reached out to him: “She told me exactly what was going on and how I got lucky enough to get her to reach out.”

Kelce shared that “some of his early helpers” were part of Swift’s family. “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.

He withheld details about their first date but shared he kept his cool. “When I met her in New York, we had already kind of been talking, so I knew we could have a nice dinner and, like, a conversation, and what goes from there will go from there,” he recalled. His friends were more nervous than he was: “Everybody around me telling me: ‘Don’t fuck this up!’ And me sitting here saying: ‘Yeah—got it.’”

Kelce explained he was guarded at first with the media, because he was afraid of losing her. “That was the biggest thing to me: make sure I don’t say anything that would push Taylor away,” he said.

But Kelce will discuss her now, offering effusive praise. He called her “hilarious” and “a genius.” They share compatible worldviews, especially when it comes to family and work, he added. “Everybody knows I’m a family guy,” he said. “Her team is her family. Her family does a lot of stuff in terms of the tour, the marketing, being around, so I think she has a lot of those values as well, which is right up my alley.”

He complimented her song writing, calling it a miracle the way Swift can turn life into poetry. “I’ve never been a man of words,” he admitted. “Being around her, seeing how smart Taylor is, has been fucking mind-blowing. I’m learning every day.”

He also addressed the attention that comes with dating her: “Obviously I’ve never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them…. I’ve never dealt with it,” Kelce said. “But at the same time, I’m not running away from any of it…. The scrutiny she gets, how much she has a magnifying glass on her, every single day, paparazzi outside her house, outside every restaurant she goes to, after every flight she gets off, and she’s just living, enjoying life. When she acts like that I better not be the one acting all strange.”

Kelce’s mom, Donna, then gave a remarkably sweet comment about how Kelce has changed since dating Swift, hammering home how real it is. “I can tell you this: He’s happier than I’ve seen him in a long time…. God bless him, he shot for the stars!”

Senior News and Strategy Editor

Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.