Travis Kelce, an NFL player, claimed he is “learning every day” from Taylor Swift, whose new romance has catapulted him to levels of visibility and scrutiny shared by few others on the planet.
“I’ve never been a man of words,” the 34-year-old Kansas City Chiefs player told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published Monday.
He is now dating one of the industry’s most powerful songwriters, a woman characterized as a “literary giant” by a Shakespeare expert in an Australian newspaper.
“Being around her, seeing how smart Taylor, is,” Kelce told the Journal, has been “mind-blowing. I’m learning every day.”
This covers how she handles the high celebrity expectations. Kelce was famous prior to meeting Swift, but the Journal dismisses this as “football famous.”
Swift’s fanbase, meanwhile, spans the globe and is fiercely loyal. Her social media followers are in the hundreds of millions, her Eras Tour is on track to become the first to make a billion dollars, and political commentators are debating her potential effect in US elections.
Her appearance at two of Kelce’s games resulted in a 400% increase in television viewership and jersey sales. Swift fans — basically, everyone — have been pouring over Kelce’s old tweets in joy, according to recent social media trends.
“Obviously I’ve never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them … I’ve never dealt with it,” Kelce told the Journal.
“But at the same time, I’m not running away from any of it,” he said.
“The scrutiny she gets, how much she has a magnifying glass on her, every single day, paparazzi outside her house, outside every restaurant she goes to, after every flight she gets off, and she’s just living, enjoying life. When she acts like that I better not be the one acting all strange.”