At just 34 years old, most of the existing literature to date about Travis Kelce, a native of Ohio, is purely sports. It is logical, given the brilliant career of the tight end. But the paths of love, the press and fame are inscrutable, and just a month ago Kelce has become the protagonist on all screens of television programs, serious newspapers, supermarket magazines, radio conversations, podcasts and hallways and any format in which two or more people start talking about popular culture. Because the man until now known for simply being the tight end, as his position is called, of the Kansas City Chiefs, a famous American football team – for those who know American football – has gone overnight to be the boyfriend of America. Well, Taylor Swift, which is the same thing for that matter.
But before that, until just a month ago, Kelce (pronounce kelsi either kelsnot even his own family agrees on the matter, he has confessed) it was only a star of American football, the mass sport that the United States loves and that is in the middle of the game season. But not a global star. His relationship with Swift, 33 years old and a megastar of the moment, has placed him in the spotlight, a position that, given his performance in the spotlight, he seems to handle with his left hand and a perennial half-smile on his face. . Kelce put himself in the spotlight swiftie in July, when the singer gave a concert of her The Eras Tour, the tour that will raise $4 billion, in Arrowhead, the stadium of the Kansas City Chiefs. Then, he said, he tried to approach her to give her one of the friendship bracelets that Swift fans exchange at her concerts. But he didn’t make it. And he did not hesitate to tell that small failure with humor and his head down in the famous podcast which he shares with his older brother, Jason, also a professional soccer player. But shortly after, rumors began to spread that he had managed to talk to her. And that there had been a meeting. And that they were starting a date. And everything exploded when she started going, at the end of September, to her games. When they appeared last weekend, Friday and Saturday, holding hands in New York, the fairy tale of the bracelet had come full circle.
Kelce was already one of the most popular players in the country thanks to his almost 10 years of professional career. Since 2013, when he started, season after season he has been among the 100 best players in the NFL, the US professional football league. His career is even more striking because it runs parallel to that of his brother Jason, two years older than He was also a professional player, in his case with the Philadelphia Eagles. At their school in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, they both played many sports, as many as their parents’, Donna and Ed’s, salaries could afford. The couple saw potential in the boys and devoted themselves to them regardless of sacrifices. In fact, they were de facto separated, but they continued living together so they could continue paying the bills more comfortably than maintaining two houses. In the documentary Kelce (Amazon Prime), where the life of the first-born son is portrayed, Travis remembers how he noticed that there was something strange about his parents when, staying the night at other children’s houses, he observed that the other children’s parents were sleeping in the same room. Not yours.
The effort on the part of the Kelces paid off. The two boys became professionals and popular characters throughout the United States. Daniel Devesa, former professional soccer player, official narrator of American football matches for the Federation in Spain and with two podcasts specialized in the matter and more of 100 interviews to players, he affirms that the brothers are among the best in the NFL at the moment. “In his position of tight end, Travis Kelce is probably one of the greatest in history, and he’s still active. I consider his brother Jason the best center, it has been for the last five or six years,” he says by phone. Last season their careers were so parallel that they achieved something unique in history: for the first time two brothers faced each other in the Super Bowl, the epic annual American football final.
Donna and Ed Kelce had already seen their boys win the title, Jason with his Eagles in 2018 and Travis and the Chiefs in 2020, but never faced each other. “Mom can’t lose,” the youngest joked those days, shortly before the renamed Kelce Bowl, and he also stated: “You won’t see me say many barbarities [de los Eagles] because I adore my brother. But it’s going to be a very emotional game, for sure.” The rest of Americans must have thought the same: it became the most watched television program in US history, with 115 million viewers. Donna made a t-shirt mixing the colors and numbers of her two children. Travis beat Jason and Jason, who was thinking of retiring with the second ring under his arm, decided to stay one more year. That, at least. Jason worries about injuries and not spending enough time with his family (he is married with three daughters, ages four, two and a half, and eight months). Travis still has a couple of years left, at least, of high performance.
But these last few seasons have been more than profitable for this filial and semi-comic duo. The couple, who live almost 2,000 kilometers away, decided to launch a podcast together a year ago, when last season started. Although at first with certain qualms – Jason has admitted that he was afraid of losing part of the popular fervor that accompanies him in his host city, where they call him “the king of Philadelphia” – his ease has made him New Heights, which is what it is called, becomes the most followed American football space in the country in almost all formats (only in Youtube they achieve between one and three million weekly viewers). “He podcast is triumphing. It is very likely that they earn both with their advertising and sports contracts,” analyzes Devesa. Thanks to his way of telling the NFL, interspersing topics from everyday life and popular culture, as well as from his personal life (appearances by Jason’s very blonde daughters, who adore their “uncle Trav”, are common), they have has been gaining a handful of loyal followers and also advertisers. Something that helps boost the careers and vast fortunes of the brothers—both earn about 14 million dollars (13.2 million euros) annually on their respective teams—who have developed their own businesses. Travis has a clothing line, Tru Kolorsand a charitable foundation, 87&Running, for children at risk of exclusion; and Jason has created Underdogsalso clothes whose proceeds are donated.
It was in New Heights where Travis told the story of the famous friendship bracelet that he wanted to give to Swift, and also where Jason asked him about the singer for the first time. The two bring up the topic naturally, but knowing that their listeners, regulars and newcomers, want to know. In the second Kelce game that the artist attended, in New York, the NFL cameras focused on her up to 17 times; Travis even commented that they were “going a little overboard.” “For some it is a bit excessive, ‘we already know what it is, I’m watching this for football,’ laughs Devesa. “I understand people who are more purists, that it bothers them; But I also understand the NFL that is having a good vein there and wants to exploit it. There are Taylor Swift followers who had no idea about the NFL and there will be people who will start following her and watching games for her. I don’t know if Travis will end up getting fed up with people saying ‘Who is that guy who goes with Taylor Swift?’
It doesn’t seem to be the case. Travis Kelce already looked for a girlfriend (and a certain popularity) in the reality 2016 Catching Kelce, where 50 girls from all 50 US states showed up to be his partner. The winner was Maya Benberry, from Kentucky, whom Kelce dated for a few months. Earlier this year he recalled the experience as “extremely strange” and “learning.” Later, he had a relationship with Kayla Nicolea journalist specializing in sports and entertainment, as well as influencer, whom he met on Instagram, and with whom he dated from 2016 to 2020 and then, intermittently, until 2022.
Now Travis Kelce’s profile—and that of Jason, Ed, Donna and the entire family—has multiplied in the media with the emergence of Hurricane Swift. The singer is seen in the box chatting with the mother of the players, laughing with her father (her children joke, stating that he has taken out the artist’s records from the municipal library and is learning her music), and the photos multiply and videos of both of them going out to dinner together, in addition to the thousands of rumors that accompany ultra-media couples: if they have bought a house, if he intends to accompany her on her intense world tour next year, if she will go to his next matches. Only time will tell how the most high-profile couples on the planet have fared. Time and a future Taylor Swift song.
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