When Taylor Swift joined Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce on the New Heights podcast, we expected to learn a lot about The Life of a Showgirl, and we did. But we learned even more about the relationship dynamic between Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, including what they talked about on their first date and the green flags they see in each other.
The two-hour long podcast was a fascinating look at their relationship — fans have never seen Swift in this kind of context, talking openly about a partner and seeing their rapport firsthand. Their chemistry and support for each other was clear; fans compared it to FaceTiming with a friend you haven't caught up with in a while.
Below, we rounded up 11 things we learned about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce and their relationship on the New Heights podcast:
1. Taylor Swift revealed she feels she owes their relationship to the podcast
As soon as the episode started, Taylor Swift gave her relationship a shoutout. “This podcast has done a lot for me. I owe a lot to this podcast. This podcast got me a boyfriend," she said, joking that Kelce "decided to use it as his personal dating app about two years ago.”
Swift took the chance to speak more about how the two got together, sharing Kelce's plans to invite himself to one of her concerts at the Chiefs' Arrowhead Stadium. “You realize he didn't even reach out to our management. When this podcast came out, I was like, ‘Did he ever reach out to be in the tents? Or did we know he was in the building?’" The answer: He didn't. “He came with Pat, and he thought that because he knew the elevator lady, he could talk to her about just getting down to my dressing room.”
Though Kelce was denied entry then, he nevertheless persisted and was open about his interest in dating Swift, which piqued her curiosity. “This kind of felt more like I was in an ‘80s John Hughes movie, and he was just like standing outside of my window with a boombox, just being like, ’I want to date you. Do you want to go on a date with me?' I was like, if this guy isn't crazy, which is a big if, this is sort of what I've been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager."
Swift concluded, saying, “It was wild, but it worked. I'm glad it worked. I'm just circling back to New Heights to say thank you for this.”
2. Their first date doubled as a football lesson
Reminiscing about her first date, Swift revealed she outed herself as a non-football fan. “Jason, on our first date, I literally, I legitimately asked him what it was like when the Chiefs played the Eagles in the Super Bowl, and he looked across the field, across the line of scrimmage, and saw his brother standing on the other five feet in front of him on the field."
"He didn't even look at me. I now know what an insane question that was," she recounted. “He was like, 'Actually, I'm on the offense and my brother's on the offense, and I'm only on the field at the same time as the defense.' I thought everyone was on there at the same time… I didn't know what the chains were. I didn't know what a tight end was.”
Swift said now she's “obsessed” with football, and Kelce told her he is “forever thankful for [her] diving into the football world wholeheartedly."
3. Travis Kelce was the first person Taylor Swift hugged after buying back her masters
Everyone who knows remotely anything about Taylor Swift knows how much it meant to her when she finally bought back her masters — and the person she celebrated the achievement with was none other than Kelce.
After she got the call from her mom that they had successfully bought back the rights for her old music, Swift, who recalls “weeping,” ran to Kelce to share the news. “I was like, 'Get yourself together, get your sh*t together, like just go tell Travis in a normal way. And I knock on the door, and he's playing video games. And I'm trying to say it in a normal way. And I'm just like, ‘Travis!’ And he puts his headset down. He's like, ‘Guys, gotta go.’ I think he thought something was wrong. And I come up and I'm just like, 'I got all my music back. And then just start absolutely heaving. Just dead weight. I had no power in my legs to support myself."
Kelce admitted he started crying, too. “You were weeping,” Swift said.
4. Travis Kelce says he owes their relationship to the Eras Tour
While Swift thanks the podcast for the genesis of their romance, in the episode, Kelce revealed he credits Swift's momentous Eras Tour. “I've told you this, as much as you want to give New Heights credit, I give The Eras Tour credit," he said. "I give The Eras Tour credit because if I would have never gone to that show and been mesmerized and just been captivated [by you] and then left with such a desire to want to meet you, I would have never [gone] on here and told everybody how butthurt I was [about you not getting my friendship bracelet]. I had never just been so engulfed in the curiosity of who you were.”
“I had never experienced something so mesmerizing on stage and then so real and so beautiful in person," he added. “It's like you see you on the stage and you see how crazy you can get an entire stadium going and then I get you in a room and it's like I've known you forever. It's like it was just the easiest conversation I ever had, and it was just so much fun that it just knocked my socks off."
5. One of their favorite pastimes is baking
When she's not breaking the internet with surprise announcements or touring the world, you can find Swift in the kitchen. “I have a different baking obsession every six months," Swift revealed. "Right now, we're very deep in a sourdough obsession that has taken over my life. The sourdough has taken over my life in a huge way. I'm really talking about bread 60 percent of the time now. It's become a huge, huge factor.”
And, of course, Swift has someone at home to try her baked creation. “I'm the luckiest man in the world,” he said about her newfound hobby. “I'm lucky I'm working as much as I am. I'm running as much as I am because I am getting the caloric intake.” His favorite, in case you are wondering, is regular sourdough, but a close second is blueberry lemon.
6. Travis Kelce 's Eras Tour cameo started as a “bit”
In the episode, Swift got candid about having Kelce as a surprise guest on her tour.
“That came out because we thought we were doing a bit. We both thought we were just joking. Because a lot of what we're saying is inside of a bit, and we're laughing the whole time. And every once in a while, one of us would be like, ‘Are you serious? I could be.’ It was like a 'wouldn't it be funny if' kind of thing,” Swift said. Kelce added, “I was serious in a terrifying fashion. I would try not to f*ck this up."
In the end, Swift decided to turn the bit into a reality. “I knew you were going to be down for it. I knew you were if you wanted to do it. I was never going to pressure you to do it. But the fact that when we were talking about it, we were joking, I saw that little twinkle in your eye where I was, 'Oh, he wants to do it. He wants to do it.”
7. Kelce's friendships were a green flag for Swift
At some point in the podcast, Swift was asked about spending time with Kelce's friends at various games, and she revealed it was one of the green flags that attracted her to him. “A huge green flag is that Travis has had the same friends since he was probably four years old. He's incredibly good at maintaining friendships, and he's so loyal, and his friends are equally loyal. They're just the funniest, most hilarious group of people," she said. Earlier, she described Kelce as “a vibe booster in everyone’s life that he’s in. He’s like a human exclamation point.”
8. Swift walked through the main door when she watched Kelce's first game
While everyone noticed Swift in the audience during the Chiefs v. Bears game, nobody saw her enter the game with security — and that's because, as we now know, she entered the stadium in incognito mode via general admission.
“The first game she went to, the Bears game, she literally went through the front door of the stadium," Klece recounted. “I was just like, 'Oh, she's just in it. She's down for the ride. She's here for the fun. She's like, 'I'll go through the mud. I'll be a part of Chiefs Kingdom.'”
Swift added: “I had a hat on and I had a mask on and I'm walking in just in the front. We're walking in with thousands of people in Arrowhead, and nobody noticed. There were rumors that we had been seeing each other, but I think people were like, ‘What would they talk about?' You know?”
9. Andy Reid (and Taylor's dad) set them up, and it was her family that pushed her to date him
At some point in the episode, Jason Kelce asks the couple about Kansas City Chiefs coach Andy Reid claiming he was the one who set the two up, and the two confirmed it.
“Whatever Andy Reid says, we're going to stand by,” Swift said. “He says it. That's what happened. That's what happened. He's been friends with my dad. My dad is the most social man who's ever been born. I didn't really know what the sports were that he was doing. But I knew that that was my dad's friend…”
Long story short, Reid told Taylor's dad that Kelce was interested in Swift and urged him to tell her to give him a chance. And not only did he do so, but her entire family also followed suit.
“Basically, everyone who likes you, which is a lot of people, started reaching out to everyone who knows me," Swift recounted, looking at Kelce. " Andy was vouching for you. My relatives, my cousins, were like, 'Please, please, please. He's amazing.' There were friends that were like, 'He's actually an amazing guy. He's so great.' There were a lot of people whispering in my ear about you. Actually, that's not normal. It's not normal. There are people just willing to go to bat for you and be like, 'You don't understand, this guy's incredible.'”
Swift ended the anecdote, saying: “Thank you, Andy.”
10. They spent the summer in Florida with her family
Swift revealed her dad underwent surgery this summer, so she and Kelce "moved in with him for the whole summer pretty much.” Shortly after, her mom also underwent surgery.
“It was actually one of the most special things that's ever happened to me, spending all that time with them this summer and getting to like, you have those long talks that you don't have when it's like a small, concentrated period of time,” she said. “This is our Florida summer," Swift added. "We really Florida'd it up.”
11. They try not to pay attention to what's said about them
When asked if the constant chatter surrounding their relationship affects them, the duo did not hesitate to say no. Swift said: “I don't see a lot of things. I just really think that anything you feed your brain, it will internalize. Anything you feed the internet, it will kill. I've been in the music industry for 20 years. It's pretty hard to hurt my feelings at this point."
Kelce added: "She's a pro. And it took me a little while to be a pro about it, I think. There's still some wacko theories from the beginning that I was very like, ‘Oh no, how is she handling this?’ The last thing I wanted to do is screw this up. So, in my mind, is her being so calm, cool, collected, and so just real and understanding about everything that's going on really made me grow up real fast in that aspect of things.”
Swift then continued: “If he's seeing things and he thinks it's funny and it doesn't even affect his day at all, that's really completely bled into the way that I metabolize these things. It's at a point where something can be about me, my name can be in the actual headline, and it can still be none of my business. People can be out here, people might be out here doing too much.”
