The attraction between Taylor Swift and her now fiancé Travis Kelce was mutual – and the AFL player has been by her side through some of her toughest moments
On a balmy evening in June 2024, Travis sparked pandemonium in the Swiftiverse when he joined Taylor on stage during the London leg of her Eras Tour. As the gobsmacked audience of 90,000 at Wembley Stadium looked on, he made his grand entrance during an extended intro to Taylor’s song I Can Do It With A Broken Heart . Wearing a top hat and tails, Travis carried her across the stage and fanned her as she pretended to faint, while her dancers then whipped away her white Vivienne Westwood gown to reveal a crystal-studded two-piece.
His cameo was seen as major milestone in their relationship, and as Annie Zaleski, author of Taylor Swift: The Stories Behind The Songs says, “It was such a great moment, and so unexpected. It was the first time Taylor had ever been willing to put one of her boyfriends out there, literally on stage. And it was amazing that Travis seemed to have no fear either. He clearly enjoyed every second.” Fans leapt at the wider meaning of Travis’s presence during a song about past heartbreak. “Taylor wrote that track at a very different time in her life, and it was like Travis was there to usher in this new era for her,” says Annie. “It felt like the passing of a baton in some way, which was incredibly poignant.”
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Travis was a regular at Eras shows as far afield as Australia and Japan, once saying of Taylor’s performance, “She blew me away, and I had never experienced something so mesmerising on stage and so real and so beautiful in person.” Frequently seen singing and dancing along to her set, he was snapped in Sydney with an impressive array of friendship bracelets while hanging out with singer Rita Ora in the VIP area. Backstage at one of Taylor’s London shows, Taylor and Travis also memorably posed for a selfie with Prince William, Prince George and Princess Charlotte.
As he endeavoured to support Taylor on her mammoth tour, Travis described the concerts as “electric”, saying he “enjoyed seeing her in her element and killing it on stage”. He told how her song Blank Space was his favourite, and put Cruel Summer in second place, calling it “an absolute banger” when played live.
He also revealed he loved hearing So High School, which Taylor had penned about their relationship, and reflected on the “remarkable” effort she put into every show. “To see the week in, week out, travelling from one country to the next, how excruciating it is on her body and on her mind,” he said. “It’s not just her, it was her entire tour. It was the dancers, it was the band, the singers, it was everybody involved.”
The Eras Tour was certainly a feat of epic proportions. Spanning five continents and 51 cities, its 149 shows became the highest-grossing of all time, and it was the first tour to ring in more than £1bn for any artist. Meanwhile, local economies experienced a shot of ‘Swiftonomics’ whenever Taylor rolled into town, with fans spending millions of pounds on hotels, transport, restaurants and merch. One show in Seattle even generated seismic activity equivalent to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake.
“Eras was just an immense cultural phenomenon,” says PR commentator Lynn Carratt. “Taylor was successful before it, but it sent her career stratospheric. I don’t know how she had the energy to keep doing these three-hour plus shows, night after night.”
The tour began in Arizona in March 2023 and concluded 21 months later in Vancouver in December 2024. Some 10 million fans attended globally, and each show included at least 44 songs across more than three hours. Taylor herself called it “the most exhausting, all-encompassing but most joyful, most rewarding, most wonderful thing that has happened in my life”.
Paying tribute to each of the ‘eras’ in her career, there were some 16 costume changes, including designs by the likes of Roberto Cavalli, Oscar de la Renta and Zuhair Murad. Taylor was joined on stage by 15 backing dancers, and she described the profound effort that went into learning her routines.
“Learning choreography is not my strong suit,” she said. “I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones. I wanted to be so over-rehearsed that I could be silly with the fans, and not lose my train of thought.”
During the tour, she was joined on stage by a host of special guests, including Ed Sheeran, Florence Welch and Gracie Abrams. But Travis was undoubtedly her most prized extra – and he clearly enjoyed playing the role of ultimate Swiftie.
“I get to be the plus-one,” he said. “I get to go and be that fan. Because I am a fan. I’m a fan of music. I’m a fan of art. And it’s so cool that I get to experience her being that plus-one for me on the football field… I feel that same enjoyment every time she comes to my shows.”
Taylor has certainly shown her dedication to Travis in his role as tight end for Kansas City Chiefs too, attending games week after week.
On one occasion in the early days when she showed up for a match, Travis said, “She’s just like, ‘I want to be around friends and family, and experience this with everybody.’ She got beaucoup points for that – I was like, ‘Damn, she’s a madness, she wants to be a part of it, she wants to support me and do things like that.’ I was like, ‘Man, she’s really won me over with that.’”
For the Super Bowl in February 2024, Taylor jetted from Tokyo to Las Vegas to cheer him on, and after the Chiefs stormed to victory she was seen on TV telling him, “I’ve never been so proud in my life. I can’t believe you. How did you do that?”
Travis humbly replied, “How do you not have jet lag right now?” As Lynn says, “They have literally crossed the world for each other, and it proves how genuine their relationship is, because they’re willing to travel thousands of miles to show up for one another.”
Travis also proved a rock this summer when Taylor, her mum Andrea and brother Austin helped her dad Scott recover from major heart surgery. He underwent a quintuple bypass, which Taylor called “really intense”, and the family moved in together to oversee his post-hospital recovery.
“He’s doing good,” she later said. “He is doing incredibly well.” Earlier in the year, Travis was at her side when her long-running battle to buy back the rights to her master recordings was finally settled.
Speaking on Travis’s New Heights podcast in August, Taylor told how the initial sale of her masters to Scooter Braun in 2019 “ripped my heart out of my chest”, adding, “Since I was a teenager, I’ve been saving up money to buy my music back… I thought about not owning my music every day.” She then told of the emotional moment she received the good news from Andrea. “She was like, ‘You got your music,’ and I literally hit the floor,” she said. “Bawling my eyes out, just weeping.”
In shock, Taylor went to find Travis, who was playing video games in another room. “He thought something was wrong; I started absolutely heaving. I had no power in my legs to support myself.” Travis told how she was “just dead weight” in his arms, and that he felt just as overwhelmed. “I started crying too,” he said.
As Annie says, “Travis was not afraid to show his vulnerability, and he saw how much Taylor’s masters meant to her. It’s her life’s work, and the fact he recognised that – just as she knows how much football means to him – was so telling. They have this deep understanding of their respective fields, and care hugely about what the other is going through.”
Source: Mirror
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