After nearly a year of dating, the 14-time Grammy winner and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce announced their engagement on Aug. 26 with a series of photos that looked straight out of a romance novel.
A Proposal in Bloom
In the first image, Kelce is seen kneeling in a rose-filled garden, holding out a ring box as Swift looks on in disbelief. Later shots captured the couple embracing, kissing, and laughing through the milestone moment. The couple look truly happy and full of love for each other, a sight to behold!
Swift also gave fans a close-up look at her new diamond: an old mine brilliant-cut stone in a gold bezel setting designed by Kindred Lubeck of Artifex Fine Jewelry. Let’s just say, it sparkles as loudly as her Eras Tour finale.
The couple’s joint announcement came with a cute caption that added whimsy to the moment: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”
How It All Began
Their love story traces back to summer 2023, when Kelce attended Swift’s Eras Tour stop at Arrowhead Stadium. His plan to slip her a friendship bracelet, complete with his phone number, never worked out.
“I was a little butt-hurt I didn’t get to hand her one of the bracelets I made,” Kelce admitted on his New Heights podcast with brother Jason.
Swift later confessed she found his bold move “metal as hell,” telling TIME that the podcast callout sparked their first private hangouts. “We actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew,” she said, crediting that low-key period for helping them build a real foundation.
Going Public
By September, Swift was spotted cheering Kelce on at a Chiefs game alongside his mother, Donna Kelce. She made it clear that by then, 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,” she joked.
From there, the two became each other’s biggest supporters. Swift showed up at 13 Chiefs games, including the team’s Super Bowl victory, while Kelce jetted across the globe to catch her tour stops.
Music and Milestones
Swift has even dropped lyrical nods to her fiancé. Fans believe her songs “So High School” and “The Alchemy” from The Tortured Poets Department were written with Kelce in mind.
And the athlete isn’t shy about his admiration either. “I had a blast at Tay’s show,” he gushed on his podcast after seeing her revamped Paris concert. “It’s got new everything, and I suggest everybody go see it.”
Handling the Spotlight
Both Swift and Kelce know what it means to live under a microscope, but they’ve learned to embrace it together.
“When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” Swift explained to TIME.
Kelce echoed that sentiment in WSJ. Magazine, saying, “The scrutiny she gets, paparazzi outside her house, outside every restaurant… she’s just living, enjoying life. When she acts like that, I better not be the one acting all strange.”
Now, with a ring in hand and a wedding on the horizon, Swift and Kelce seem ready to prove that fairy tales don’t just live in her lyrics, they can take root in real life too.
