Travis Kelce may have thrown the most impressive Hail Mary of all time when he asked for Taylor Swift’s phone number on his podcast, because now they might be the sweetest couple in the world. Their storybook romance full of secret meetings has elevated Kelce from being just a Super Bowl-winning tight end to being a backup dancer at his girlfriend’s show in London to gracing our streaming screens as an actor in Ryan Murphy’s new television series, “Grotesquerie.”
But Kelce’s journey to becoming a household name has not been as easy as he makes it all look. His life has been littered with ups and downs, and we’re not just talking about first downs. In fact, it was only a few games into the Kansas City Chiefs regular season that the defending Super Bowl champion was already caught in the spotlight. During a tough loss to the Atlanta Falcons, he grabbed headlines when he appeared to be crying on the bench. Speculation ran wild, with some claiming that it was because Swift wasn’t at the game to cheer him on. But the truth is that an early-season defeat is only a small setback compared to some of the other moments in his life.
He was heartbroken by the Super Bowl parade shooting
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In the aftermath of the tragic shooting that took place during the Kansas City Chiefs 2024 Super Bowl celebration, Travis Kelce tweeted that he was “heartbroken.” “My heart is with all who came out to celebrate with us and have been affected,” he wrote. “KC, you mean the world to me.” Days later, before a pre-recorded episode of their podcast, “New Heights”, Travis and Jason Kelce solemnly acknowledged the events on Instagram. “After the tragic events of the super bowl parade in Kansas City, it didn’t feel right without you hearing from us first,” Travis said. Jason added that their hearts went out to everyone who was there to celebrate — from the families, to Chiefs Kingdom, to all of Kansas city — and called the events “deeply tragic.”
It was later announced that Travis would be donating $100,000 through two separate GoFundMe’s started by the Reyes family, whose daughters were injured during the shooting. The donation came from Kelce’s non-profit organization, Eighty-Seven & Running. According to its website, its mission is to “empower disadvantaged youth to achieve success by providing resources and support to their communities and cultivating their talent in the areas of education, business, athletics, stem, and the arts.” Travis’ big-hearted donation was matched by none other than his girlfriend, Taylor Swift, who donated $100,000 to the family of a local radio DJ who was killed in the shooting.
A suspension almost derailed his career
It’s incredible to think that all that Travis Kelce has accomplished could have never happened. Back in 2008, he secured his initial dream when he was able to follow his older brother, Jason Kelce, to the University of Cincinnati to play football. But according to The Washington Post, his story almost ended there when, after his first year, he failed a marijuana test and was suspended from the team. The news of Travis’ mistake made Jason so mad that he chased his younger brother around his house. On “ManningCast” in 2022, Travis said he locked himself in a room to hide from his “wildebeest” older brother, Jason, who punched a hole in the drywall to confront him. “[Jason] didn’t beat him up or anything,” former teammate Derek Wolfe told the Washington Post. “He just was in there yelling at him, trying to get him straightened up.”
Lucky for Travis, Jason didn’t let him off easy — he forced his younger brother into his own personal school of hard knocks, going so far as to put an extra bed in his room for his younger brother to sleep in. All the while, Jason continued to advocate to the Cincinnati coaching staff that Travis had potential. Still on suspension and unsure of his future, Travis told The Washington Post he got a job at a call center where he was “yelled at every single day” for talking to people about Obamacare. Thankfully, he was let back on the team during his junior year, and the rest is history.
The two brothers didn’t always make time for each other
While Travis and Jason Kelce may seem inseparable nowadays, they haven’t always been so close. When the Chiefs tight end and his older brother joined fellow NFL siblings Payton and Eli Manning as commentators during “Monday Night Football,” Eli Manning asked if their relationship ever got unhealthy and heated. Travis first called his older brother “the enforcer in the house” and recalled a story where, “He punched me in the face after playing a game of basketball. I had finally gotten to the point where I was looking him eye to eye in high school. I picked him up and threw him onto the kitchen floor… We got yelled at by mom and almost injured dad in the midst of it all.” Then in college, former Cincinnati teammate Tony Pike told The Washington Post that “they couldn’t have been more opposite” with Jason Kelce described as a ukulele-playing bohemian while Travis Kelce was known to dress up and go out to the bars and nightclubs.
But perhaps saddest of all was the distance that grew between them when they both made it to the NFL. Speaking to Today, Jason opened up about his and Travis’ relationship prior to being in the media spotlight and said that it was mostly business, especially during football season. “For the first 11 years of our career, I talked to my brother, in season especially, you know, once a month … It really was probably once every two or three months,” he said. But their podcast has brought them much closer, allowing them, and us, to be a bigger part of their lives.
His parents held their marriage together for their kids
After being named one of Glamour’s 2024 Women of the Year, Travis’s mother, Donna Kelce opened up about her life, motherhood, marriage, and the unspoken lengths she went to make sure her kids had good childhoods. “I worked really, really hard,” she said. “I was a major breadwinner in the family. And I think it’s important for kids to see that a woman can do whatever she wants, but I did stand still too.” According to Donna, she and her husband knew that their marriage wasn’t working, but they toughed it out for their children. “Ours was a very friendly relationship,” she said. “So, we could do that and make sure that their life was normal as possible.”
Travis Kelce’s parents are known for being in the stands at all of their children’s games, with Donna especially known for dressing the part of the perfect football mom. But Donna and Ed Kelce got divorced after almost 25 years together. In the 2022 Amazon Prime Video documentary “Kelce,” Travis opened up about the childhood specter of divorce. “I knew my mom and dad’s situation was different than other parents,” ” he said. “I would go and have sleepovers at other houses and the other parents are staying in the same room, and my parents didn’t stay in the same room.” In it, he foreshadows his mother’s own admission. “I started making those connections when I was in middle school and I realized that they were probably gonna split — but they stayed together for me and Jason’s benefit, I believe,” he recalled.
Fans have died to see him
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In 2023, Kansas City Chiefs superfan Jessica Tangen died from a cardiac-related issue while attending the Chiefs’ July training camp. Speaking to KCTV, when asked who her mother’s favorite player was, her daughter, Kyla Tangen, said it was Travis Kelce. “No doubt,” she said. “She would always watch New Heights. New episode, she would watch it. She would also always watch the Chiefs interview and look for Travis Kelce’s part of the interview.” And while Travis did not officially comment on the passing of Tangen, the Daily Mail reported that he and his teammates were shaken up over the incident.
The tragedy would eerily repeat itself, this time at Travis’ new beau’s Rio de Janeiro concert, when Ana Clara Benevides died during Taylor Swift’s show amidst 100-degree-plus heat. Sadly able to bond over the very specific tragedy, Travis allegedly consoled her, asking her not to take it too hard and saying that as performers some things are out of their control. Swift, ever the empath, decided not to remain silent. After taking two shows off, she dedicated her performance of the heartfelt song “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” to Benevides.
