A year after the split and now with his pending relationship with Taylor Swift many Kansas City Chiefs fans might be asking why did Travis Kelce and Kayla Nicole break up? Previously, during an episode of the podcast New Heights in July 2023, the star tight end and single player for the Kansas City Chiefs star revealed that he tried to give Swift a friendship bracelet with the digits of his phone number before her concert for her Eras Tour at the Arrowhead Stadium.
“I was disappointed that she doesn’t talk before or after her shows because she has to save her voice for the 44 songs that she sings, so I was a little butthurt I didn’t get to hand her one of the bracelets I made for her,” Kelce admitted. Kelce’s brother, Jason Kelce added, “She doesn’t meet anybody — or at least she didn’t want to meet me, so I took it personal, but it was an unbelievable show.”
The Super Bowl winner has a complicated dating past (including his own personalized dating show). So what exactly happened between Travis Kelce and Kayla Nicole that caused them to break up? Read more to find out.
Why did Travis Kelce and Kayla Nicole break up?
Why did Travis Kelce and Kayla Nicole break up? We don’t have a reason but Kelce and Nicole started dating after some Instagram interactions together. “He had been following me and insta-flirting for a few months,” she revealed in an Instagram Story. “All double taps and no dm. Soooo after a little liquid courage and a pep talk from @iqueenb (something along the lines of ‘WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR’) I dm’d him on New Years.”
“I didn’t just go through every single pic and just start liking it immediately,” Kelce clarified with E! News. “It was over the course of a month’s span, just following her and liking the pictures that she was posting and watching all of her stories when stories had first started coming out.”
He continued, “I was just stalking her and then finally on New Year’s, she gave in. And, you know, New Year new me. She just shot her shot, jumped in my DMs and the rest is history.”
The two nearly dated on and off for five years, but Kelce confirmed that he was single in 2023. “I’m in the free market right now. I’m out there just enjoying life, focused on my profession,” he said in an interview with Pivor.
Barstool Sports alleged that Kelce did not pay for half the bills or their dates when the two were together. The tight end shut down those rumors immediately. “Don’t buy into that s–t,” he said. “I would never say that I was supporting her. She had a very financially stable life and what she was doing in her career.”
“But you’ve got to be crazy if you’d think I would never helped or gave her a couple thousand to grab some food or she gave me some money to go get some food,” he added. “We were in a relationship for five years. A hundred dollars here, a hundred dollars there wasn’t even thought about.”
Nicole responded to Barstool Sports’ X (formerly known as Twitter) to debunk this rumor, writing, “Not sure where y’all got this nonsense from, but it’s absurd and very false.” After their breakup, the model posted a now-deleted Tiktok, “You’re not stupid Kayla. No, I am actually. Thought I’d get wifed after dating for 5 year. That’s 1,825 days.”
During an interview with People published on October 25, 2023, she confessed: “Just full transparency, I went through this major breakup, major life change, and I had lost a substantial amount of weight within a very short amount of time. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t eating. I was really abusing melatonin to sleep at night,” she says. “It was like I was working out, I was in really great shape, but I felt like sh— and I was sad, and I was having a hard time getting out of bed. It got to the point where I was like, ‘Okay, what else can I possibly do?’ So, I started to go to therapy … and quickly realized, okay, it’s one thing to be physically fit, but it’s another thing to be mentally fit. You could be in the best shape of your life, but mentally, if you are not a healthy person, it’s not going to feel good.”
Is Travis Kelce dating Taylor Swift? Yes! They basically hard-launched their relationship with this cute pic. Things were basically confirmed after Taylor was spotted with Travis’ mom in a suite at Arrowhead Stadium and celebrating a touchdown that Travis scored. Right after the game, they drove down in Travis’ convertible to an intimate dinner together.
Right before the outing, Travis seemingly confirmed that the reports about trying to give his number to Taylor were true. “I said what I said. And I meant what I said when I said it. And you know what, it is what it is,” he said, before playing it coy about their relationship status on NFL+ With Andrew Siciliano. “I’m not gonna talk about my personal life,” he added.
The Kansas City Chiefs tight end went on to playfully tease listeners. “I know what you writers wanna hear, and you wanna hear more about that and I’m not gonna give you anything,” he joked while pointing a finger at the camera.
Andrew pressed him for more, however. “Has she reached out?” he asked, to which Travis remained tight lipped. “And that’s gonna wrap it up here,” he said, ending the interview.
NFL commentators haven’t taken a break from these rumors and took every chance to tease the player. When Travis scored a touchdown against the Jacksonville Jaguars, commentator Ian Eagle quipped, “Kelce finds a blank space for the score,” making reference to Taylor’s song “Blank Space” from her 1989 album, adding later that the champion tight end could “shake it off” after suffering a knee injury in practice a few weeks prior, another reference to a T-Swift song, “Shake It Off”.
NFL Network’s Rich Eisen chimed in with the banter on Twitter with a rollcall of Swift hits while covering Kelce’s return to the field, including “Delicate,” “Anti-Hero” and “August.” Sharing a clip of the broadcast via Instagram, Eisen wrote in the caption, “Look what you made me do, @killatrav.” Kelce responded: “Well played Rich… Well played 👏🏻😂”
Even Travis’ own brother Jason Kelce who plays for the Philadelphia Eagles (Taylor’s hometown team) teased his brother. He explained on the “WIP Morning Show,” “It’s hard to answer because I don’t really know a lot about what’s happening with Travis’ love life,” and added that he was “blindsided” by the speculation. He called the rumor “out of that world” before saying, “But having said that, man, I think they’re doing great, and I think it’s all 100 percent true and I hope that this thing goes the mile.”
He then cleared up what he said by saying he was joking and that he stays out of his brother’s business, “No I’m joking. I don’t even know what’s happening.”