Has there ever been a harder launch of a relationship than Taylor Swift literally sprinting straight past a row of porta potties and into Travis Kelce’s arms after her concert in Buenos Aires, Argentina last Saturday? Even Travis “I want to keep my private life private” Kelce admits that the moment (captured by approximately nine bajillion cell phone cameras) was the most public of public displays of affection.
“This is public knowledge,” Travis said on the latest episode of the New Heights podcast, which he co-hosts with brother Jason Kelce, released Wednesday. “I can still keep that part private, but this is public. I went down to Argentina, and it was a whole bunch of fun. I went south of the equator, which, I’ve never been.”
Mhmm, yes, sure, adventures to new-to-him parts of the world, that’s great, but we (and big brother Jason) really want to hear about Swift’s lyrical nod to Travis during her song “Karma.” It was anything but subtle when Swift swapped the lyric “Karma is the guy on the screen / coming straight home to me” to “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs / coming straight home to me.” Hey, isn’t Travis Kelce on the Chiefs?
As the Guy on the Chiefs himself said, “You mean ‘Karma’? I had no clue—I might have had a little bit of a clue, but definitely when I heard it come out of her mouth, it still shocked me, it blew me away. I was like, ‘Oh, she really just said that!’”
“I was enjoying myself down there in Buenos Aires,” he said. “The show was even more electric knowing that I had a little more to enjoy it for and, yeah, Taylor absolutely ripped it. She killed it. It looked like she was having fun up there.”
As for leaving Taylor’s dad, Scott Swift, hanging for a high five when he reacted to the lyric change with peak dad hype? Travis regrets it deeply. He was busy covering his face and losing his mind, so the requested skin was not given, despite Travis being a self-proclaimed “big high five guy.”
“Yeah, Mr. Swift, I apologize, big guy,” Travis said. “Man, I missed that. I never miss a high five too, big high five guy. It’s the most electric thing you can do at an event. I’m sorry, Mr. Swift.”
Travis’s father, Ed Kelce, has said that he finds Taylor impressive and humble, and likes that she gets how much Travis needs to sleep (which is lots and lots, for the record). For his part, Travis appears to be winning Scott Swift over in kind: According to Travis, he’s working on luring Scott into Chiefs fandom after a lifelong devotion to the Eagles, to Jason Kelce’s horror.
“I might have persuaded him at dinner the night before when I met him,” Travis said. “He’s a huge football guy.”
Travis said that he arrived in Argentina Friday and left Sunday, and was able to have some nice steak with Taylor and her dad Friday evening, when the planned concert was postponed for weather, a delay that “she wasn’t too happy about.”
“We got some good food, man,” he said. “Had some empanadas and steak, they’re big on all the different cuts of meat, got some good steak down there, man. The first night I was there, really the only night that we had a chance to go to dinner was the night the show got postponed so we didn’t want to just go and have a blast throughout the city like we didn’t care about the show, so we just stayed in the hotel and kind of kept to ourselves, man.”
His biggest recommendation after the whirlwind trip? Go see Taylor Swift play, as he has done at least twice now.
“It’ll blow you away,” he told Jason, urging him to catch a date of the tour. “It’ll absolutely blow you away.”
Representatives for Taylor Swift did not immediately return a request for comment.