Donna Kelce has reflected on her initial comments regarding her son Travis Kelce’s relationship with Taylor Swift and revealed how she feels about the relationship now.
For Travis’ cover interview with WSJ Magazine, Donna told the outlet that she regretted her response to questions about how she felt about spending time with her son’s then-new girlfriend on the Today show. At the time, the football mom said she felt “okay” hanging out in the Arrowhead Stadium suite with Swift, which sparked speculation that she didn’t like the pop star.
She clarified in the WSJ interview that her son’s relationship with the “Cruel Summer” singer was “fairly new” at the time, so she didn’t have a fully formed opinion about her quite yet. She also noted that her son called her after the interview to assure her that she’d handled the question okay, and to compliment her glasses. However, now that some time has passed and the couple’s relationship has become more serious, she confessed that she’s over the moon about her son’s newfound happiness.
“I can tell you this,” a “beaming” Donna told the outlet. “He’s happier than I’ve seen him in a long time ... God bless him. He shot for the stars!”
During the interview, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end opened up about his relationship with Swift, noting that the pop star is “a genius” and incredibly “hilarious”. He admitted that they are both family-oriented as well.
“Everybody knows I’m a family guy,” the Super Bowl champion explained. “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 also got candid about how he ultimately snagged the “Anti Hero” singer’s attention, with the help of a few mutual acquaintances.
“There were definitely people [Swift] knew that knew who I was, in her corner [who said]: ‘Yo! Did you know he was coming?’ I had somebody playing Cupid,” he told the outlet, revealing that it was Swift who messaged him first. “She told me exactly what was going on and how I got lucky enough to get her to reach out.”
Although the pair eventually went public at Arrowhead Stadium, the tight end also opened up about their first few dates dining in New York City. He said: “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.”
By the time she made a public appearance at his home game in Kansas City, Kelce revealed Swift’s family was already acting as his wingmen. “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 added to the outlet.
Since Swift’s NFL game appearance went viral, the pair have continued to make headlines, with Swifties and non-Swifties alike loving the couple. From cheering each other on at their respective gigs to both appearing in the season premiere of SNL as themselves, they have had a whirlwind past couple of months.
The Chiefs tight end acknowledged that he had “never dated anyone with that kind of aura around them” but said that he planned on taking a page out of his girlfriend’s book and told the outlet that he wasn’t going to let the intense public scrutiny and paparazzi keep him from living his life to the fullest.
“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,” he said. “When she acts like that I better not be the one acting all strange.”
Kelce was last seen supporting Swift on 11 November, when he made an appearance at the Estadio River Plate in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to watch her perform her Eras Tour show.
Despite initial reports, Swift will not be attending Kelce’s game against his brother Jason Kelce’s team the Philadelphia Eagles on Monday night due to scheduling conflicts.
