Sportscaster Charissa Thompson Is So Excited to See Friend Travis Kelce Happily Dating Taylor Swift

Sportscaster Charissa Thompson knew that Travis Kelce would hit it off with his now-girlfriend, Taylor Swift.

“Travis has been a good friend for a long time and I just love who he is as a person and I always want him to be happy,” Thompson, 42, exclusively told Us Weekly on Tuesday, May 14, at Amazon's upfront presentation. “My friend Erin Andrews and I have a podcast [and] we were talking about how we just want him to be happy and then it came to fruition. We put it out in the universe.”

She continued, “We do not get any credit for it but we were definitely big advocates of it, and I'm so happy to see them so happy together.”

Thompson — who is a “big believer in energy” — and Andrews, 46, discussed Swift, 34, on an August 2023 episode of their “Calm Down” podcast.

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“Taylor, I don’t know what you’re doing in your life right now besides rocking the world [on The Eras Tour],” Andrews said at the time. “Please, try our friend Travis. He is fantastic.”

The two sportscasters are big fans of Swift and had been discussing the rumors that Kelce, also 34, wanted to date the pop star. One month earlier, Kelce announced on his “New Heights” podcast that he wanted to meet Swift — and exchange phone numbers — when he saw her Eras concert in Kansas City, but he ultimately wasn’t allowed backstage.

Swift reached out to Kelce right after his July 2023 podcast comments, and they started privately dating “right away,” which she revealed to TIME the following December.

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The couple finally confirmed their romance in September 2023 when Swift stepped out at Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs home game against the Chicago Bears. She sat in a private box with Travis’ mom, Donna Kelce, and his friends.

Swift continued to attend the Chiefs tight end’s NFL games, which soon led her fans to start watching the sport more often.

“It's awesome,” Thompson told Us of Swifties becoming new football fans. “Anytime a naysayer wants to say anything about Taylor, I say it's a good thing that this new generation of women are watching football, because I know that I started watching football because of my father.”

She continued, “And so if young girls and not even just young girls, young boys, whoever is now that new audience comes in because of her, I think it's only a positive thing. I don't see anything negative.”

Swift has gone to 13 of Travis’ games, including February’s Super Bowl LVIII, without any care about how the “dads, Brads and Chads” — a term she coined in her TIME Person of the Year interview — have criticized the NFL’s frequent coverage of her appearances.

Travis is currently in his football offseason and has recently joined Swift in Europe for the summer leg of her Eras Tour. He last attended her Sunday, May 12, concert in Paris when she added several Chiefs-coded references in her staging and costumes.

Thompson, meanwhile, is gearing up to cover the 2024-2025 NFL season for Prime Video.

“The Wild Card game is going to be great. Anything that we can continue to do and the opportunities that we have been afforded here at Amazon — having a playoff game is just one more thing even in our short tenure — and the infancy of this opportunity says a lot about the viewership,” Thompson added on Tuesday. “When we started we asked if we were going to be able to find an audience. But people will always find the NFL.”

With reporting by Andrew Nodell