Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce: Timeline of events leading to couple’s engagement
By Casey Cooper-Fiske, PA Senior Entertainment Reporter
Singer Taylor Swift and NFL star Travis Kelce have confirmed their engagement in a joint Instagram post showing the Kansas City Chiefs tight end proposing.
The announcement showed the pair embracing in a garden and read: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”
Here we take a look at the key moments leading up to the couple’s engagement.
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The couple got together after Kelce, 35, announced on his New Heights podcast, which he presents with his brother Jason, in 2023 that he wanted to date Swift, also 35, after he failed to meet her when she performed at Arrowhead Stadium, home of his NFL team the Kansas City Chiefs.
Speaking on an episode of New Heights, Swift said she considered it to be “a wild, romantic gesture” but joked he “didn’t do any proper logistical planning” to meet her at the Eras Tour show, such as get in touch with her management.
Instead, she revealed he thought his status on the team would allow him to go backstage to meet her.
Swift said: “Because he knows the elevator lady, he thought he could talk to her about just getting down to my dressing room. That’s how it works in 1973.”
In September 2023, Swift also made her first trip to watch Kelce play, when she was spotted sitting next to Kelce’s mother.
At an Eras Tour concert in November that year, Swift first changed the lyrics to her song Karma, from 2022’s Midnights album, from “karma is the guy on the screen coming straight home to me” to “karma is the guy on the Chiefs coming straight home to me”, in reference to Kelce.
– 2024
In February, Kelce’s Chiefs beats the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl and Swift, who is spotted watching on, on the big screen, is cheered by fans in Las Vegas. The pair are later seen embracing at full time.
In April, Swift releases her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, featuring the song The Alchemy, which is said to be written about Kelce, while an anthology edition is also released which contains the song So High School, also said to be written about the NFL star.
Kelce appeared at one of Swift’s Eras Tour shows at London’s Wembley Stadium on June 23rd, where he arrived on stage as she prepared to perform the The Tortured Poets Department section of the show, wearing a top hat and tails, and helped to prepare her to sing I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.
In a later Instagram post after the show, Swift says she is “still cracking up/swooning over @killatrav’s Eras Tour debut”.
– 2025
Swift once again attends the Super Bowl, but is booed by the heavily pro-Philadelphia Eagles crowd when shown on the video boards as the two teams played at the Super Bowl in New Orleans in February, with Kelce on the losing side.
In August, Swift announced that her 12th studio album The Life Of A Showgirl would be released on October 3rd, on Kelce’s New Heights podcast.
Unveiling a copy of the new record as a guest on the show, the singer said: “This is my new album, The Life Of A Showgirl. It’s something I was working on while I was in Europe on the Eras tour.”
On the podcast, Kelce said the fact that Swift recorded the album while simultaneously travelling the world for her sold-out tour was “still blowing my mind”.
Swift said: “I just love music. I would be playing shows three nights in a row, then I would have three days off.
“I would fly to Sweden. Working on this, I was physically exhausted at this point in the tour, but I was so mentally stimulated and so excited to be creating.”
On August 26th, Swift announced her engagement to Kelce in a joint Instagram post with the Kansas City Chiefs tight end, which showed pictures of him proposing to her and the pair embracing in a garden.
The post read: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”