She ended up dating the boy on the football team and is now headed for the holy ground of matrimony.
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce announced their engagement Tuesday, and it has been a long time coming for the singer and the Kansas City Chiefs tight end, whose romance has captivated the pop music world for two years.
The first conclusive evidence of a budding romance came on Sept. 24, 2023, when Swift showed up to Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, to see Kelce’s Chiefs thump the Chicago Bears.
Her attendance shocked and thrilled the world, but some people may also be confused how this budding romance began.
Rumors about the two potentially dating had been swirling since summer 2023.
News broke in April 2023 that Swift had ended her six-year relationship with actor Joe Alwyn just as her world tour was picking up steam in the United States. Kelce appears to have remained single after having broken up with his longtime girlfriend, sports journalist Kayla Nicole, in 2022.
A friendship bracelet and a dream
Kelce did more than just drop a hint that he was interested in Swift — he publicly declared his interest to the world.
The Chief attended the Eras Tour in July 2023 when Swift was performing at Arrowhead Stadium, his home field.
Kelce and his brother, Jason Kelce, later discussed his appearance at the concert on their podcast, “New Heights.” He said he attended the show and was “butt hurt” that Swift wasn’t able to speak to him before her performance.
“If you’re up on Taylor Swift concerts, there are friendship bracelets,” Kelce said. “And I received a bunch of them being there, but I wanted to give Taylor Swift one with my number on it.”
“Your number as in 87, or your phone number?” his brother asked.
“You know which one,” Kelce joked back.
The Kelce brothers keep dropping hints
All was quiet on the Kelce and Swift front for the next few weeks, as she was still completing the first U.S. leg of her tour and released her “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” re-recording. In that time she also announced the upcoming release of “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” during a concert in Los Angeles.
A playful moment came in August 2023 when Chiefs social media posted a TikTok video questioning players about their celebrity crushes.
“Mine was ...” Kelce pondered.
“Taylor Swift?” a teammate interrupted, causing Kelce to chuckle before he moved on.
Many brushed aside the cheeky clip as mischievous teasing between teammates at the time.
Swift cheers Kelce on, seemingly confirming the rumors
Swift obviously took him up on the offer and showed up at Arrowhead Stadium on Sept. 24, 2023. She was seen in a private suite with Kelce’s mother, Donna, cheering him on decked out in Chiefs colors.
She was later seen leaving the stadium with Kelce, telling him in a video clip posted on X that “it was the best.”
Many of Swift’s fans were delighted to see her having a good time, posting jokes about her enthusiasm, her potential romance and her turning her back on her hometown team, the Philadelphia Eagles.
Kelce discussed her appearance on a September 2023 episode of his podcast, calling it “a game to remember.”
“Shoutout to Taylor for pulling up; that was pretty ballsy!” he said on “New Heights.”
“I just thought it was awesome how everybody in the suite had nothing but great things to say about her, the friends and family,” he added.
Welcome to New York (via New Jersey)
On Oct. 1, 2023, the "Lover" singer showed up at MetLife Stadium and took in Kansas City's 23-20 win over the New York Jets.
The audience for the "Sunday Night Football" game peaked at 29.2 million viewers about 9:30 p.m. ET in the second quarter, according to NBC.
Compared with an average of the first three weeks of “SNF," there were significant spikes in viewership among girls 12 to 17 (53%), women 18 to 24 (24%) and women older than 35 (34%), according to the network and Nielsen data.
'Karma is the guy on the Chiefs'
The relationship became "Eras" official on Nov. 11, 2023, in Argentina when Swift changed the lyrics to "Karma," the ending song of her shows on the tour.
Instead of “Karma is the guy on the screen coming straight home to me," she sang, “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs coming straight home to me" toward the end of Buenos Aires performance.
The lyric change brought immediate screams inside Estadio River Plate and across the Swift world.
Braving a brutal Kansas City cold
Not even record-setting cold could freeze out the couple's romance on Jan. 13, 2024, when Swift attended a Chiefs playoff game against the visiting Miami Dolphins.
The mercury plummeted to minus 3 with a wind chill factor of minus 25 at halftime of the contest, in which some fans lost limbs to the brutal temperatures.
Swift and Kelce's family were safely bundled up in a luxury box on that frigid Saturday night.
Hugging kids, hanging out with shirtless Jason
A week later, Swift was back in another cold setting with the Kelce family, this time in Orchard Park, New York, to see the Chiefs beat the Buffalo Bills.
Then-8-year-old Ella Piazza made a sign and caught the attention of Jason Kelce, and the rest is Chiefs-Bills history. Looking back, Swift said that was a key moment in being indoctrinated to the Kelce family.
"You're handing me children through the window," Swift hilariously recalled long after the playoff game. "Whose kid is that, Jason? Do you know where this kid came from? I think it was one of your best moments, and I think I'm very lucky to have gotten to see it."
Trans-Pacific flight for Super Bowl
Swift proved she could bend time to show her love for Kelce and his Super Bowl appearance.
After a Saturday night Eras Tour show in Tokyo on Super Bowl Eve, she jetted off for the West Coast and landed Saturday afternoon in Los Angeles.
Whether Swift could make the Super Bowl in Las Vegas on Feb. 11, 2024, was an intense discussion point among Swift's fans around the world.
Swift was at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas when the Chiefs won an OT thriller over the San Francisco 49ers for a second consecutive world title.
She shared a luxury box with Blake Lively and Ice Spice, as well as the Kelce family, including Donna Kelce and Jason Kelce.
'Do not drop the baby'
Kelce has caught 1,004 passes in his NFL career for 12,151 yards, but few catches have mattered more to him than one on June 23, 2024, when he appeared onstage during Swift's show at Wembley Stadium in London.
He was a surprise dancer that night during her rendition of "I Can Do It With a Broken Heart."
He pulled off the act flawlessly but later admitted it was a nerve-racking experience.
"The one thing I told myself: Do not drop the baby. Do not drop Taylor," he said on the "New Heights" podcast.
Eagles fans booing the daughter of Pennsylvania during Super Bowl?
Love means enduring some raspberries every now and then, as Swift found out on Feb. 9 this year during the Super Bowl.
She seemed slightly taken aback in New Orleans when Eagles fans booed as her picture was shown on screens during the Chiefs-Eagles title game.
Is that any way to treat someone from the burbs of Reading, Pennsylvania?
Swift was shaking it off months later and taking pride in needling male sports fans who are somehow offended by her being.
“As we all know, you guys have a lot of male sports fans that listen to your podcast,” she said on "New Heights." “And we all know that if there’s one thing that male sports fans want to see in their spaces and on their screens, it’s more of me.”
Swift living it up at 'Tight End University'
What could be more important than getting along with your future spouse's peers and work colleagues?
Swift accompanied Kelce to his "Tight End University" this summer, and by all accounts, she was a hit with faculty members and students.
Tight End University tri-founder George Kittle, the 49ers tight end, got to sing one of his favorite songs, "Love Story," with Swift.
"And it was just an absolute riot and something I’ll probably remember forever,” he told NBC Sports Bay Area.
She electrified a TEU fundraiser on June 24, getting onstage to perform "Shake It Off."
Love on the podcast
Swift was a guest on the Kelce brothers’ podcast on Aug. 13 and announced her new album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”
Swift described how blown away she was by Kelce’s very public courting.
“This is sort of what I’ve been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager,” she said.
And baby, she just said yes
The couple announced their engagement Tuesday on social media with a photo and a cheeky caption: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”
