Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s love story, from friendship bracelets to engagement rings

Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift walk together after an AFC Championship NFL football game between the Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens, Jan. 28, 2024, in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)

NEW YORK — It started with a friendship bracelet. It ended with an engagement ring. Taylor Swift, the pop superstar, and Travis Kelce, the football champion, are engaged.

The fiances, both 35, announced the news in a joint post on Instagram on Tuesday. It is the latest chapter in the couple’s love story, one that has spanned two years, two Super Bowls, an album announcement and the highest-grossing tour of all time.

Here is a look at some of the major events in their relationship.

A friendship bracelet, undelivered

It started, fittingly, with a friendship bracelet.

It was way back in July 2023 that Kelce attended Swift’s Eras concert at Arrowhead Stadium, where the Chiefs play.

After, on his “New Heights” podcast with brother Jason Kelce, he professed to being disappointed — well, his word was “butthurt” — that he couldn’t meet Swift and present her with a bracelet with his phone number on it.

“She doesn’t meet anybody, or at least she didn’t want to meet me, so I took it personal,” he quipped. The podcast asked on Instagram: “Anyone know how to get a bracelet to @taylorswift13? … asking for a friend.”

Drivin’ the getaway car

But by that September, Kelce was hinting his efforts had achieved some success. He declined to elaborate amid speculation, telling an interviewer: “It is what it is.”

Clearly, though, something was happening. Soon, Kelce revealed he’d invited Swift to a game at Arrowhead. “I threw the ball in her court,” he said on another talk show.

Swift took Kelce up on his offer, appearing for all the world to see at the Chiefs-Bears game, cheering next to his mom, Donna Kelce. The two left the stadium in Kelce’s purple Chevelle “getaway car” — forgive the pun, but Kelce himself used it.

“Pretty ballsy,” Kelce said a few days later of Swift’s appearance, adding how much he loved seeing her cheer next to his mother.

It was the launch of a long series of appearances by Swift at Chiefs games. There was some online angst over whether Swift was distracting from football — while the NFL itself capitalized on her fandom. A day after the flashy Los Angeles premiere of her “Taylor Swift: Eras Tour” movie, she was back at Arrowhead.

Karma is the guy on the Chiefs

And now it was time for Kelce to be the adoring fan. In November 2023, Swift kicked off the international leg of her Eras tour, beginning in Argentina, where she changed the lyrics of “Karma” to salute her beau. “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs, coming straight home to me,” she sang. Scott Swift, next to a beaming Kelce, applauded his daughter’s new flame.

When Time magazine announced its person of the year, few were surprised. In the Time interview, Swift spoke about her relationship.

“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” Swift said, adding that they’d already been a couple before that first Chiefs game cameo.

Soon after, things were heating up on the football field — meaning the Chiefs were heading to the Super Bowl. At the AFC championship game, the couple made it clear they were fine with whatever attention was coming their way. In the middle of the field in Baltimore, after the Chiefs beat the Ravens, Swift and Kelce kissed. “I love you,” Kelce said. “So much it’s not funny.”

A race across nine time zones

There was one game left. Fans wondered: How would Swift make it from her Tokyo shows to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas?

“This week is truly the best kind of chaos,” Swift posted on Instagram.

Chaos indeed. In one week of February 2024, Swift attended the Grammys in Los Angeles, jetted to Tokyo for four concerts, then jumped back onto her private plane to make the Super Bowl with time to spare. To get there, she crossed nine time zones and the international dateline.

“She’s rewriting the history books herself,” Kelce said a day after the Grammys, where Swift had won album of the year for a record fourth time. “I told her I’ll have to hold up my end of the bargain and come home with hardware, too.”

And he did. The two kissed on the field again after the Chiefs beat the San Francisco 49ers, Swift in her “87” necklace.

On the road again

Within days, Swift was on the road again, with Kelce joining her in Australia for some koala-cuddling at the zoo.

In Paris, Swift introduced a section from “The Tortured Poets Department,” her new album. Fans wondered if Kelce had made his way into some of its lyrics — like “You knew what you wanted and, boy, you got her,” from “So High School.”

But the highlight came in June, during a celebrity-packed set of concerts in London. There, Kelce made his Eras stage debut, donning a tuxedo and top hat and carrying Swift in his arms during a choreographed bit before “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”

“I’m still cracking up/swooning,” Swift wrote later on Instagram.

‘Happiness and fun and magic’

As for Kelce, he spoke with pride about the relationship, noting on the “Bussin’ with the Boys” podcast that he had no desire to hide anything.

“That’s my girl,” he said. “That’s my lady. I’m proud of that.”

Swift echoed that emotion when she accepted an MTV Video Music Award last September, shouting out “my boyfriend Travis” in her speech.

“Everything this man touches turns to happiness and fun and magic,” she said.

‘I am just a jamoke supporting his girlfriend’

Throughout the summer and fall of 2024, Kelce attended a number of Swift’s remaining tour dates and mentioned her on “New Heights,” officially referring to her as “his girlfriend” in a July episode.

“She is every bit of what everyone makes her out to be. She’s so awesome. Some of these people you meet, and you’re just like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing here,’” he said. “You are unbelievable, your talent is unbelievable, how you present yourself is unbelievable and I am just a jamoke supporting his girlfriend.”

Swift, too, was regularly photographed attending Kelce’s games — including the 2025 Super Bowl.

Lights, camera, action, football

A month post-Super Bowl, the couple made their red-carpet debut at the Tight End University in June, an annual three-day training summit founded by Kelce, George Kittle and Greg Olsen.

They were then spotted at Brooklyn Bowl in Nashville, where Swift hopped on stage to perform “Shake it Off” with country singer Kane Brown. For fans, it marked yet another moment of the couple showing very public support and admiration for one another.

‘The Life of a Showgirl’

A couple that collaborates together, stays together.

Swift announced her highly anticipated 12th studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl,” in mid-August and included Kelce in the rollout. It began with a tease from “New Heights,” which later revealed Swift would appear in an episode the following day.

Swift told the Kelce brothers she wanted to show them something, revealing a mint-green briefcase that featured her initials in orange. Jason Kelce asked what was in it, prompting her to pull out a vinyl record.

‘Our jobs are very similar’

In the two-hour “New Heights” episode featuring Swift, she went into detail about the pair’s summer following the Super Bowl. She said she spent considerable time in Florida with Travis Kelce. She also said “our jobs are very similar”: They revolve around entertaining “people for three hours in NFL stadiums.”

On her self-described “favorite podcast,” Swift credited “New Heights” for getting her a boyfriend. “This is sort of what I’ve been writing songs about wanting to happen to me since I was a teenager,” she said of their romance.

And Kelce credited the tour for, well, getting him a girlfriend. “I see you on that stage and see how you can get an entire stadium going, and then I get you in a room and it’s like I’ve known you forever,” he said. “It’s the easiest conversation I ever had, and it was just so much fun that it knocked my socks off.”

Jock, meet writer

In late August, in a five-photo carousel shared to both Swift and Kelce’s official Instagram accounts, the couple announced their engagement. “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married,” she wrote in her caption.

It’s unclear when and where the two got engaged.

Jocelyn Noveck And Maria Sherman, The Associated Press