The Person of the Year winner for Time magazine also disclosed that they became friends after Kelce “very adorably” called her out on his podcast in July.
In an interview for Time magazine’s 2023 Person of the Year cover story, Taylor Swift finally discussed her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, following months of nonstop rumors, conjecture, and camera pans showing her supporting the NFL player from the family skybox.
“I thought it was metal as hell when Travis very sweetly attacked me on his podcast, and that’s how it all started. In a July 26 episode of Kelce’s New Heights podcast, Swift described his botched attempt to court the singer by crafting a unique friendship bracelet for the July 9 Eras Tour performance he saw at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. “We started hanging out right after that,” Swift added. We got to know one another during the considerable period of time that no one knew about us, for which I am thankful. We had been a couple by the time I attended that first game. I believe there are many who believe they witnessed our first date at that game. In one of her first in-depth interviews in four years, she stated, “We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.”
At the time, Kelce expressed his “butt hurt” at Swift’s decision to keep her voice intact by not talking to anyone prior to or following her performances. He claimed on the pod that “she doesn’t meet anybody, or at least she didn’t want to meet me, so I took it personally.”
Naturally, they met soon after, and Swift wrote about how they have supported one another in the months after, with Kelce traveling to Buenos Aires, Argentina on November 11 during a bye week to see another Eras event, and Taylor attending six Chiefs games. In the initial official public acknowledgement of their relationship, she stated, “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care.” On the other hand, you have to do a great deal of effort to ensure that nobody finds out that you’re seeing someone. We simply take pride in one another.
Swift added that she doesn’t even understand how camera operators know where she is seated during the games, in reference to the suite images that have been a mainstay of the NFL’s coverage of the couple. Regarding the now widely circulated video of her hanging out with Kelce’s mother and Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ wife, Brittany, she said, “There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the camera is putting me in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once.” “I’m only there to help Travis,” I don’t know if I’m annoying any parents, Brads, and Chads by being shown too much. Football turns out to be wonderful. I’ve spent my entire life being left out.
The Person of the Year has traditionally been a “ruler over traditional domains of power,” such as a politician or a giant of industry, as Time‘s editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs pointed out in the introduction. Nonetheless, Jacobs praised Swift, describing her as a “rare person who is both the writer and hero of her own story,” saying that Swift managed to “transcend borders and be a source of light.”
In the narrative, Swift also talks about how she prepared so hard for the Eras Tour, how exhausted she felt after every performance, which left her in bed all day the following day, how Kanye West’s sexist “Famous” lyrical shout-out sent her into an emotional spiral, and how the $300 million sale of her catalog to Ithaca Holdings, owned by Scooter Braun, left her feeling “so knocked on my ass.”