Travis Kelce’s Parents Met Taylor Swift—Get to Know Them & How They Feel About Her
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Whether you’re a loyal fan of the Kansas City Chiefs or a Swiftie-turned-supporter, you may want to know a thing or two about Travis Kelce’s parents to understand where the NFL player gets it all from.
Travis Kelce, star tight end for the Chiefs, was born to parents Donna and Ed Kelce on October 5, 1989, in Westlake, Ohio. As NFL fans may know, Travis isn’t the only professional football player in his family—his older brother, Jason Kelce, plays center for the Philadelphia Eagles. Both brothers have won Super Bowls before: Jason won in 2018 with the Eagles, and Travis won in 2020 and 2023 with the Chiefs. In fact, the brothers made history as the first sibling pair to face each other in a Super Bowl in 2023 when their teams played each other at Super Bowl LVII, making for one of the greatest shows of sibling sports rivalry in recent years.
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With two sons in the NFL, Travis Kelce’s parents are certainly proud—and they regularly make it clear just how supportive they are, both in the stadiums and on social media. Kelce’s mom, Donna, has often made headlines for her appearances at her sons games: in January 2023, she went viral for her quest to see both of her son’s Wild Card playoff matches in person, traveling over 1,200 miles in one day to make it happen. She first attended Jason’s Eagles game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Florida before catching a plane to Missouri to watch Travis and the Chiefs play against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Later that year, Donna made headlines again when she was photographed in a suite alongside her son Travis Kelce’s rumored girlfriend, Taylor Swift. The Midnights singer attended the Chiefs game against the Chicago Bears on September 24, 2023, where she was seen celebrating a touchdown made by Travis with his mom and friends. During an episode of his “New Heights” podcast following the game, Travis revealed that his friends and family had “nothing but great things to say about her.”
“She looked amazing and everybody was talking about her in great light,” he said. “To see the slow motion chest bumps, to see the high fives with Mom, to see how, you know, Chiefs kingdom was all excited that she was there—that sh*t was absolutely hysterical and it was definitely a game I’ll remember, that’s for damn sure.”
According to a source who spoke to People after the match, Taylor also met Travis Kelce’s dad, Ed, at the game. We’re sure that it’s a day to remember for both of Travis Kelce’s parents, but nothing tops watching their son win big on the field. For more about Travis Kelce’s parents—from what they do for work, to whether they’re still together—keep on reading below.
Who is Travis Kelce’s mom, Donna Kelce?
Mama Kelce hails from Cleveland, Ohio. She’s now retired, but before embracing her role as an NFL mom, she had a background in finance. According to her LinkedIn, she earned a Bachelor of Science in communications from Ohio University and started her career as an equity writer at Bank One in 1981, while simultaneously attending classes at Baldwin Wallace University to earn her Master of Business Administration in 1983. She moved up in her career, eventually becoming the vice president at Key Community Development Corporation in 2003. Later, she spent 12 years as the senior vice president at Truist before retiring in 2021.
Along with being a working mom, Donna always appeared to nurture her sons’ interests in sports. The pair started playing hockey at the age of three and also indicated an interest in football from a young age—but it wasn’t until middle school that mama Kelce let her sons play for safety reasons.
“Nobody ever says, ‘I was the best peewee football player ever.’ And it’s not very well organized. So there’s always suspect to parents and injuries and things like that,” she told the New York Post in a January 2023 interview. “They’re not really trained coaches, so I made them wait until they were in middle school to play football. They played seventh and eighth grade.”
Their late start didn’t hold them back, as Travis and Jason Kelce always had a competitive streak. “It was always a competition. Who gets to the table first. Who’s got the last chicken wing. Who’s gonna get in the front seat of the car. Who’s gonna take the elevator and get down to the bottom floor first,” she said. “It just always was competition. And they don’t like to lose. They want to win, and that’s just the way they are.”
Donna went on to share how their competitive nature lasted into adulthood. “You hate each other when you’re growing up, but later on in life, you’re best buds, because you’ve gone through everything together, so it’s kinda fun,” she said. “They competed with the best that they had in the city. … It was living right next to them, you know? In the next room. Whether it was—mini-hockey in the basement, whatever, it was always competition.”
Donna told People that she often uses her sons’ podcast as a form of family “group chat”, revealing that the three of them “don’t” have a texting group chat of their own. “I talk to them individually or when we’re all together, which isn’t often.”
“But when we are all together, as we were in Buffalo, you get to laugh and have a good time and joke around and I just sit back and watch because it’s so much fun to watch your kids interact,” says Donna. “And I think that’s true of any parent. It’s just so much fun to watch the love between siblings and I think that’s how they’re relatable. It’s just, it’s a family.”
Speaking with StyleCaster, Donna praised all the other people in the Kelce’s lives that helped raise her kids. “There were a lot of people that were that helped raise those two,” she tells StyleCaster via Zoom. “I don’t think two people can do it on their own. A lot of coaches, a lot of teachers, and a lot of other parents were very, very much involved in the raising of my two sons. And it’s just been a sheer joy because I still keep in contact with the majority of them.”
She then revealed her pre-game ritual the night before the Super Bowl.
“I just send them a text and wish them good luck, hoping that they’re going to leave it all out on the field and hope that they come home with a win. I think that’s enough,” she says. “I tried to tie it in with whoever they’re playing. I’ll send them a picture of them on a horse if they’re playing against the Broncos or whatever.”
Who is Travis Kelce’s dad, Ed Kelce?
Travis Kelce’s dad, Ed, used to work as a sales rep selling products to steel manufacturers, according to the Los Angeles Times. He now appears to have retired. Like Travis Kelce’s mom, Ed Kelce was brought up in Cleveland, Ohio. He had a major impact on his sons’ love of football, as he’s always been a huge fan of the sport and even wanted to play football in college, according to People.
However, Ed’s dreams of college football were cut short when he decided to try joining the army, following in the footsteps of his military family. “Everybody in my family prior to me was in the service,” Ed said during an episode of his sons’ podcast, “New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce.” “We’re also talking about family [that] lived through World War II, so that’s what everybody did because that was the background.”
Unfortunately, Ed’s application was rejected by the Army due to a pre-existing knee injury. He eventually went on to enlist in the Coast Guard, but this endeavor was also short-lived: during bootcamp, he learned that he had Crohn’s disease. “I enlisted in the Coast Guard and the Crohn’s reared up,” Ed shared. “I’d never had that before, and I was sick. I went through most of the basic training with some severe gastrointestinal issues.” He went on to add, “They don’t need sick people in the service, they need people who are ready to perform.”
Nevertheless, Travis Kelce’s dad went on to have a successful career in the steel industry instead. He even brought his sons along with him from time to time to give them an idea of what he did for work. “I’d take them there—hard hat, safety glasses, boots, the whole nine yards,” he told the Los Angeles Times in a February 2023 interview. “I’d tell them, ‘You can have a job like your mother’s, or you can have a job like mine.’” Clearly, both of them took after their dad’s persistent spirit and decided to chart their own path in the NFL.
Are Travis Kelce’s parents still married?
Donna and Ed Kelce tied the knot in the late 1970s. However, Travis Kelce’s parents are no longer married. The pair stayed together for nearly 25 years before calling it quits, and they remain on good terms today.
“I don’t hate him. We’re friends to this day. We get along great,” Donna said on her son’s podcast, per People. “We were like a tag team with you two. We got to do all sorts of fun things. When one of you had to go out of town, the other person would help with the other child. It was perfect.”
In their documentary Kelce, Travis and his brother Jason opened up about how they grew up with their parents sleeping in separate bedrooms. “I knew my mom and dad’s situation was different than other parents,” Travis said in the doc. “I would go have sleepovers at other houses and the other parents are staying in the room, and my parents didn’t stay in the same room.”
Ed, for his part, reflected on the decision to continue raising their sons under the same roof. “If we had split as we probably both would have preferred, that would have been a nightmare with the logistics, getting kids where they had to be and providing all the support.”
When It Was Just a Game: Remembering the First Super Bowl
For more about the Super Bowl, football fans can check out When It Was Just a Game: Remembering the First Super Bowl by Harvey Frommer. The best-selling book delves into the history of the first Super Bowl, which was originally known as the AFL-NFL Championship Game. (The term “Super Bowl” was coined only in its third year.) The debut game, between the winning Green Bay Packers and the Kansas City Chiefs, was played in front of only 61,946 people at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum—an audience well below the stadium’s capacity. Harvey Frommer, a sports historian and reporter, puts the tale of that momentous game together using oral history, gathered by hundreds of interviews with players, coaches, media and spectators alike.
Remembering The First Super Bowl
11.49+
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