Taylor Swift Attended Her First Chiefs Game 1 Year Ago Today — Look Back on Their Relationship Since Going Public

One year ago today, Taylor Swift attended the Kansas City Chiefs game against the Chicago Bears on Sept. 24, 2023, kicking off a whirlwind of speculation about her relationship with tight end Travis Kelce.

When the 34-year-old singer was first spotted at Arrowhead Stadium, her romance with Kelce, also 34, was unconfirmed. At that point, the Chiefs star had revealed that he tried to give Swift his phone number when he saw her in concert on July 8, but ended up “disappointed that she doesn’t talk before or after her shows.”

As Kelce played coy while rumors continued to swirl that he and Swift had spent time together, his brother Jason said he “cannot comment” on the speculation on Sept. 14, claiming, “I don’t really know what’s going on there,” about his brother’s love life.

Three days before Swift’s first game, Kelce addressed the Swift rumors during an interview on The Pat McAfee Show, telling the host that he “threw the ball in [Swift’s] court” by inviting her to see him play at Arrowhead Stadium, where she previously performed during her Eras Tour.

To the surprise of most fans who assumed Swift would turn down the offer to travel to Kansas City, the “Fortnight” singer shocked NFL viewers and Swifties by appearing at the game, and cheering as Kelce scored a touchdown in his family suite alongside his mother Donna.

After the game — in which the Chiefs squashed the Bears 41-10 — Swift and Kelce were seen walking out together before they left the stadium in his 1970 Chevelle 408 Stroker convertible.

The couple kept their relationship status vague as Swift continued to support Kelce at Chiefs games. “Shout out to Taylor for pulling up. That was pretty ballsy,” Kelce said on an episode of his podcast on Sept. 27, 2023.

Swift returned to cheer on the Chiefs a week later on Oct. 1, bringing along celeb friends like Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman, Sabrina Carptenter, Sophie Turner and Antoni Porowski to MetLife Stadium for Kansas City’s road game against the New York Jets.

The NFL had begun participating in the fan frenzy around their relationship before the Jets matchup, using Swift’s song “Welcome to New York” in a Swift-themed ad for the matchup.

Swift’s commitment to supporting Kelce ramped up from there. The day after attending her Eras Tour film premiere in Los Angeles, she flew out to Kansas City to watch him play for the third-straight week.

Two days later, on Oct. 14, the couple made surprise appearances on Saturday Night Live during a trip to New York City, before leaving no doubt about their relationship status. After the show, Swift and Kelce had dinner at the Waverly Inn restaurant and were seen holding hands as they left the restaurant.

Swift continued attending Chiefs games — 13 in total, ending in their Super Bowl LVIII victory — throughout the season. And Kelce returned the favor when he could. On Nov. 11, during the Chiefs’ bye week, Kelce was spotted in the VIP section of Swift’s show in Buenos Aires, sitting with the singer’s dad Scott.

During the show, Swift gave Kelce a shoutout as she changed the lyrics of her final song “Karma” to, “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs coming straight home to me,” causing Kelce to flash a big grin.

The next month, Swiftpublicly discussed her relationship with Kelce for the first time during her interview as Time‘s 2023 Person of the Year, revealing that it “all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell.”

She also clarified that when she spotted at one of Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs games for the first time, in September they were already a couple. “I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date,” Swift added.

And in her acceptance speech at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards earlier this month, Swift thanked Kelce for his support of her music, marking the first time she has publicly said his name.

 

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“Something that I’ll always remember is that when I would finish a take and I’d say ‘Cut,’ and we’d be done with that take, I would always just hear someone like, cheering, and like, ‘Woo!’ Like from across the studio where we were shooting it and that one person was my boyfriend Travis,” Swift said while accepting her award for video of the year.

“Everything this man touches turns to happiness and fun and magic so I want to thank him for adding that to our shoot, because I’ll always remember that,” she added of Kelce.

This season, Swift attended the Chiefs’ first two home games at Arrowhead Stadium, but chose not to travel to Atlanta for their week three matchup in Atlanta. In total, the singer has now supported her boyfriend at 15 games since their relationship began, with more surely to come.