Before the start of the 2025 NFL season, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift surprised the world by announcing their engagement.
Swift and Kelce started dating after he publicly lamented not being able to give the singer his number on a friendship bracelet after seeing the “Eras Tour” in Kansas City two years ago.
The 35-year-old pop star spoke about the iconic shout-out during a guest appearance on “New Heights,” a podcast hosted by Travis and his older brother, Jason Kelce, earlier this month. Swift likened the bold move to a scene from John Hughes’ romantic comedy, “Say Anything.”
Swift said, “[It’s like] he was standing outside of my window with a boombox saying, ‘I want to date you! Do you want to go on a date with me? I made you a friendship bracelet! Do you want to date me?'”
Flash forward to today, the famous couple wrote in a shared Instagram post on August 26, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married 🧨.” The post garnered over 29 million likes in under 24 hours and briefly crashed the social media site. “Turns out Instagram needed to process this news, just like everyone else,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.
Taylor Swift & Travis Still Don’t Follow Each Other on Instagram
Following their engagement announcement, Kelce gained over 750,000 new followers while Swift added over 1 million. However, the 14-time Grammy winner still doesn’t follow Kelce on Instagram and vice versa.
Swift follows a total of zero people, a decision she explained to Capital FM in 2019, per The International News. “I found a couple years ago that social media started to feel a bit like the media’s way of monitoring my every move,” she said.
GettyTravis Kelce, left, and Taylor Swift react as the Edmonton Oilers and the Florida Panthers play during the first period in Game Four of the Stanley Cup Final.
“And like I started to realize that if I didn’t wish one of my friends a happy birthday on Instagram, there would literally be articles saying, like, ‘Unsquadded! Taylor Swift is no longer friends with so-and-so!’ And I’d literally be at the person’s birthday party with them! … I kind of reject this idea that if you didn’t see it on the Internet it didn’t happen.
“So it was kind of my way of like not allowing my life to be controlled and monitored by social media. And I think we’re all kind of taking steps to try to figure out how to not let it take over our lives and our feelings of validation. You can’t have a memory and take a picture of it and spend the rest of the day looking at the comments for that one snapshot of your day, you should just maybe be present for your whole day.”
While Kelce follows 1,640 people on Instagram, he still hasn’t clicked follow on Swift.
Travis Kelce Turned His Backyard Into a Magical Garden For the Proposal, Which Took Place After Taylor Swift’s Podcast Appearance
GettyChiefs tighe end Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift celebrate the AFC Championship Game at M&T Bank Stadium on January 28, 2024.
Fans wondering when and how the 35-year-old got down on one knee, his father, Ed Kelce, spilled the details on “The Jimmy & Nath Show With Emma” on August 27.
Ed revealed that Kelce asked Swift’s father, Scott Swift, for permission to marry his daughter over a month ago. However, his son didn’t propose until after Swift’s appearance on “New Heights,” which means the couple waited 13 days to announce the big news.
Travis had plans to do it this next weekend before he took off for Brazil,” where the Chiefs take on the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 1. “He was going to make a big production out of it.
“You know, wanted to make it uber special. And I told him the same thing Scott told him, asking her is what’s going to make it special. Not where you do it. You could do it on the side of the road. So Scott had told him, ‘Just get it done.'”
Instead, Kelce turned the backyard of his Leawood, Kansas, home into a magic garden. Florists were still hiding in the bushes when they went outside.
“He surprised her,” Ed gushed. “They were going to go out to dinner and she was ready to go and he was like, ‘Let’s go out in the garden, let’s go out there on the little patio out there and have a glass of wine. We’ve got time.'”
Travis Kelce, Taylor Swift Skip Traditional Move After Engagement