{"id":26360,"date":"2025-08-27T11:25:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T11:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/26360\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T11:25:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T11:25:09","slug":"the-biggest-moments-of-their-relationship-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/26360\/","title":{"rendered":"The biggest moments of their relationship \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

He might be the greatest tight end in football history. And she\u2019s the billion-dollar superstar of pop music. After Travis Kelce<\/a> knelt to the ground and pulled out a ring and said \u201cMarry me, Taylor Swift<\/a>,\u201d a flashbulb memory was created for football fans, music lovers and, well, almost everybody else, too. With the announcement of their engagement on Tuesday<\/a>, an epic \u2013 and epically scrutinised \u2013 romance took the next step. Here\u2019s how we got there.<\/p>\n

The failed bracelet plan <\/b><\/p>\n

It all began in July 2023, when Kelce attended a Swift concert in Kansas City, Missouri, and adopted her fans\u2019 tradition of making and exchanging friendship bracelets with messages on them. Only Kelce planned to give his bracelet directly to Swift. And rather than an upbeat message or song title, his bracelet included his phone number.<\/p>\n

But he was unable to meet Swift. (It was later revealed that he had thought he could breeze right past the singer\u2019s stringent security for a meeting because he knew someone working the stadium elevator.) The missed connection made him \u201ca little butthurt\u201d, he said. Still, it amounted to a declaration of interest when Kelce talked about it on New Heights, the podcast he hosts with his brother, Jason.<\/p>\n

The world reacts. It\u2019s not subtle<\/b><\/p>\n

There has always been a lot of interest in Swift\u2019s love life. Somehow it got even more intense as people began to whisper and then shout about meetings between Swift and Kelce.<\/p>\n

A TikTok trend had Swifties approaching their football-loving friends or significant others and guilelessly saying variations of: \u201cTaylor Swift is really going to put this Travis Kelce guy on the map,\u201d often to irate, sputtering responses about how Kelce was already extremely famous.<\/p>\n

Still, few would argue the fact that even a future Hall of Famer\u2019s star shines a little brighter in the rays of Taylor Swift.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Taylor Swift\u2019s latest album announcement was another marketing masterclassOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Visits to the workplace <\/b><\/p>\n

As the 2023 football season started, Swift took an interest in the sport, notably in games played by the Kansas City Chiefs<\/a>, Kelce\u2019s team. In September, she turned up at the team\u2019s home stadium, Arrowhead, sitting in a box with Kelce\u2019s mother, Donna. (His mom, oh my gosh!)<\/p>\n

Swift continued going to games, and if that wasn\u2019t enough to get fans as excited by the doings in the stands as those on the field, she also brought along celebrity friends including Blake Lively<\/a>, Ryan Reynolds<\/a> and Hugh Jackman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More in Swift\u2019s milieu than Kelce\u2019s, the couple appeared on Saturday Night Live in October and \u2013 gasp \u2013 they were holding hands afterward. A fairly chaste kiss on the cheek in a photo posted on Instagram stoked speculation even more.<\/p>\n

\"TravisTravis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs kisses Taylor Swift after defeating the San Francisco 49ers at the Super Bowl in February, 2024, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photograph: Ezra Shaw\/Getty Images <\/p>\n

The football game visits continued through the Super Bowl in 2024, which Kansas City duly won. (Kelce had nine catches for 93 yards, both game highs.)<\/p>\n

There were people who conjured up bizarre conspiracy theories: Were Kansas City\u2019s victories rigged by the league? Was it all a scam to boost the presidential campaign of Joe Biden? (Swift had endorsed Democrats in the past.) Was she a Defense Department asset somehow? Well, no, no and no, but that didn\u2019t stop the buzz in some online and TV news circles.<\/p>\n

There were also grousers who believed that shots of Swift cheering in the stands were taking up valuable TV time that should have been devoted to football. Luckily, a New York Times study found that Swift was shown for a total of less than a minute at most of the games.<\/p>\n

Making it official <\/b><\/p>\n

Step by step, it got more real. In magazine interviews in late 2023, the pair began officially, if somewhat discreetly, discussing their relationship.<\/p>\n

At a show in Buenos Aires in November, Swift changed a lyric to say: \u201cKarma is the guy on the Chiefs, coming straight home to me.\u201d Even some of her dancers seemed surprised.<\/p>\n

Swift never jumped on the gridiron to catch a pass (not that she couldn\u2019t, we\u2019d wager). But Kelce, in a top hat, carried Swift onstage at the Eras Tour in London in June 2024, drawing screams from the already hoarse fans in attendance.<\/p>\n

Accepting an MTV award in September, Swift mentioned \u201cmy boyfriend, Travis\u201d, and Talmudic readers of Swiftiana said it was her most prominent public acknowledgment of him.<\/p>\n

\"TravisTravis Kelce and Taylor Swift on the New Heights podcast, which Kelce co-hosts with his brother, Jason. Photograph: Youtube\/New Heights <\/p>\n

A laid-back podcast <\/b><\/p>\n

Swift appeared on the Kelce brothers\u2019 podcast<\/a> this month. The appearance broke records, as more than a million people watched it simultaneously as it aired on YouTube. It has been viewed more than 20 million times.<\/p>\n

The ostensible purpose was to announce news of her upcoming album. But viewers also noticed how loose, funny and, well, real, Swift seemed. It seemed to be a rare look at Taylor Swift the person, away from the media handlers, the millions of fans and the billions of dollars. She talked about baking bread, for goodness\u2019 sake.<\/p>\n

The frenzied speculation reached a new peak. Was it finally happening?<\/p>\n

Yes, it finally happened <\/b><\/p>\n

Swift and Kelce posted photographs and announced their engagement on Instagram on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,\u201d Swift wrote.<\/p>\n

By the afternoon, the post was at 18 million likes and climbing.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared in The New York Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He might be the greatest tight end in football history. And she\u2019s the billion-dollar superstar of pop music.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[8150,18,117,21636,19,17,2277,973],"class_list":{"0":"post-26360","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-blake-lively","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-hugh-jackman","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-ryan-reynolds","15":"tag-taylor-swift"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}