Last June, the superstar tight end of the Kansas City Chiefs, Travis Kelce, attended the show of the summer: Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. The performances have garnered plenty of media attention already, so I do not need to explain how they have boosted economies across the country.
Since I do not need to explain any of these monumental records Swift broke during this tour, or recount how impressive putting on three separate three-hour-long concerts in a new city every weekend for six months is, I am going to talk about the newest and most exciting facet of Swift’s life: her new boyfriend.
I know the stigmas around Swift’s dating life. People say that she is a maneater, who only dates boys to villainize them in songs for publicity. I have a few things to say to the haters, but I will let Swift speak for herself, as she did years ago, in an interview for her Forever and Always Tour .
“I just figured that if guys don’t want me to write bad songs about them, then they shouldn’t do bad things,” said Swift.
At this point in her incredibly successful career, any man that chooses to engage in a relationship with Swift knows what he is getting into. Swift is yet to find herself without a plentiful line-up of men looking to date her.
This leads me back to Kelce. He had already made a name for himself as the league’s best tight end while on the two time Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs. But, his popularity has skyrocketed in recent weeks, as a whole new demographic has found themselves joining his fanbase: the Swifties.
Kelce hosts a popular podcast with his brother, Jason Kelce, who is a center for the Philadelphia Eagles, another important NFL team to Swifties. We will come back to this detail later.
Kelce revealed that as much as he loved attending the Eras Tour, he was disappointed to see that Swift did not come to mingle with her fans after the performance. After three hours of singing, she must preserve her vocals to do it all again at the next show. Kelce said that he had made Swift a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it but was unable to get the bracelet to the popstar.
This immediately gained attention from the Swiftie community because not only was an American football player interested in Swift, who has a long history of only dating British men, but he had attempted to get her attention in a way that resonated with the Swiftie lore.
When Swift released her tenth album, “Midnights,” in October 2022, it included the song “You’re On Your Own, Kid.” Many fans believe that this song is a narrative of Swift’s own journey to stardom and becoming the icon she is now.
She entered the public eye with the release of her first album at age 16, so she did not get much of an opportunity to make normal high school friends and have the typical young adult experiences. She was, as the song says, “on her own.”
This song also includes the lines “So make the friendship bracelets / Take the moment and taste it.” These lines inspire Swifties everywhere to make armfuls of Swift-related friendship bracelets for the tour and trade them amongst each other. Friendship bracelets became a calling card of a true Swift fan.
First, this shows that Kelce really made an effort to understand Swift’s empire before shooting his shot. Most of us girls have been hit on before in significantly less flattering and meaningful ways, so Kelce’s actions are already scoring him brownie points, and we do not even know if Swift is interested yet — or so we thought.
A few weeks ago, it happened. It was a normal Sunday in late September, as the Chiefs played the Chicago Bears. All of a sudden, all eyes were on Kelce’s box, which was hosting two important women: his mother, and 12-time Grammy Award winner Swift.
On that Sunday, worlds collided. Every Chiefs fan with a Swiftie girlfriend knew he was definitely not going to have a problem getting a date to a Chiefs game this fall. Kelce gained over 1 million Instagram followers, and his jersey sales increased nearly 400% in two days, according to Fanatics.
But beyond all of this, there are a few intricacies in their relationship that scrutinous fans have begun to point out.
First of all, Kelce’s jersey number is 87. Swift is about to re-release her fifth album, “1989,” named after her birth year. On her first album, “Taylor Swift,” teenage Swift wrote the line “And I’ll be eighty-seven, you’ll be eighty-nine.” The roles may be reversed, but the coincidence is still intriguing, and TikTok edits to the lyrics have been flooding my For You page.
Kelce is a little bit older than Swift, but not by much. His birthday is Oct. 5, and he was also born in 1989, a year that clearly holds some meaning for Swift. But Oct. 5 is important as well.
On Swift’s ninth album, “evermore,” the thirteenth track is called “marjorie.” It is one of Swift’s saddest songs in my opinion, and she frequently cried while singing it on the Eras Tour. After all, it is about Swift’s deceased grandmother, who was an opera singer.
Swift talks about how she wishes she had taken the time they had together more seriously and that she is proud to be living out her grandmother’s dreams of performing. The meaning is shrouded in layers of metaphor and allusion. But when the meaning does cut through, it hits you right in the heart.
Not only that, but Swift took the time to include her grandmother’s own opera vocals in the background of the song. The key is that “What died didn’t stay dead / You’re alive, you’re alive in my head,” and her grandmother’s birthday is October 5th. Kelce’s birthday is a combination of Swift and her beloved grandmother’s birthdays.
Speaking of family, remember when I said to note that Jason Kelce is an Eagles player? Swift’s home state is Pennsylvania, and she grew up an Eagles fan. She even mentions the Eagles in her song “gold rush,” which is also from “evermore.”
“I see me padding across your wooden floors / With my Eagles T-shirt hanging from the door,” Swift sings. She has even been photographed by paparazzi wearing an Eagles hat. Jokes are being made that Swift’s relationship with Kelce is to throw him off his game so that the Chiefs cannot beat out the Eagles to win the Superbowl, like they did last year.
To further add to my evidence that Swift and Kelce are destined to be together is the 2019 song “Cornelia Street” from Swift’s album “Lover.” She fully wrote this song for Joe Alwyn, who she was with at the time and dated for six years. It includes the lyrics “We were a fresh page on the desk, filling in the blanks as we go / As if the streetlights pointed in an arrowhead leading us home.”
Arrowhead is the name of the stadium where the Chiefs play, and this is the same stadium in which Kelce attended the Eras Tour. It is something of a meeting place for the two.
To wrap up, 13 has long been Swift’s lucky number. She was born on Dec. 13, and young Swift often wrote the number 13 on the back of her hand during her Speak Now World Tour. Since Kelce is Swift’s 13th public boyfriend, I mean, how can you call her a maneater, with only 13 public boyfriends by the age of 33 — with how long she’s been in the spotlight — anyway?
I have incredible confidence in this new and budding relationship as well as a deep fear that by writing this article I have jinxed and ruined everything. I am hopeful that after many years on a long winding road of relationships of various quality, which have all ultimately ended, Swift has finally found her soulmate.
