With any new relationship, getting the approval of your partner’s family is one of the more important steps in developing a lifelong bond. But for the Kelce family, that’s been a process played out on the national stage.
Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has tied himself to pop superstar Taylor Swift in the past two weeks – with their quickly developing romance one of the biggest stories in sports.
Swift has shown up to Travis’s games in Weeks 3 and 4 – first in Kansas City and then again in New York.
At both of those stops, Donna Kelce – Travis’s mother – has sat by watching with a grin as the pop star cheers on her son. But Donna is only one part of the Kelce family.
From his father, who never gave them greens growing up, to his brother who Travis followed into the NFL, MailSport takes a look at the most talked about family in football.
Jason Kelce
Starting off with the brother that got Travis into football to begin with, Jason Kelce is just one year older than the Chiefs tight end.
Jason played both running back and linebacker in high school football outside of Cleveland, Ohio. But he also partook in sports like hockey and basketball.
On an episode of their ‘New Heights’ podcast filmed after Super Bowl LVII was played, Travis admitted that he followed his brother into football.
‘The crazy part is I would never be playing this damn game if it wasn’t for you,’ Travis told his brother. Jason replied, saying ‘Stop, yes you would.’
‘It’s the truth, man, I followed your footsteps into it. When you started playing football… so you started playing hockey, I started playing hockey. You started playing football, I started playing football. I’ve kinda just been followin’ your footsteps throughout this whole gig.’
Travis kept following Jason’s footsteps to the University of Cincinnati – with Jason getting drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in 2011.
These days, Jason is part of one of the best offensive line units in all of the NFL and he has a Super Bowl win of his own – when Philadelphia beat New England in Super Bowl LII.
He’s been named to the All-Pro first-team five times and the Pro Bowl six times
Kylie McDevitt Kelce
When Kylie McDevitt swiped on a Tinder profile in her college days, she thought she was getting cat fished. After looking up the person in the pictures, she realized that profile claimed to belong to a football player for the Eagles.
Kylie accepted an invitation from the Tinder match to meet up at a bar, and that’s when she was first introduced to Jason Kelce.
The date went horribly.
‘Well, his profile at the time was something to the effect of; I want to have deep meaningful conversations and talk about getting married and having kids or something like that,’ she said on their podcast. ‘You fell asleep 45 minutes after I got there on the bar table because he was too drunk.’
Jason admitted he was ‘a little bit too inebriated’ but added ‘I was sober enough to know it was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life. It was love at first sight.’
The pair got married in April of 2018 and just welcomed their third daughter on February 23 – just days after the Kelce brothers played each other in the Super Bowl.
Kylie’s even provided some dating advice to Travis, who asked her which profile pictures to use on Tinder back when he was still on the market in early September.
‘Ky, you think I should go ‘stache or no ‘stache?,’ Travis asked.
She joked that her answer would ‘sound a little harsh’ before telling him to use the mustache picture, ‘because if they’d swipe right at your worst, then they’ll love you at your best’.
Ed Kelce
Much like his two sons, Ed also grew up in Cleveland and played football in high school. However, after trying college out, he felt a calling to go down a different path.
Ed’s family had a deep military background, so he decided to try and serve his country. Unfortunately, both the Marines and the Army rejected his application due to a knee injury and after enlisting in the Coast Guard, he found out he had Crohn’s disease.
After his military ambitions were scuppered, Ed decided to enter the steel industry that helped to build up the Rust Belt city.
Ed started off in the mill, but eventually went into sales. He made sure to occasionally bring his two sons along to teach them the value of hard work.
‘I’d take them there — hard hat, safety glasses, boots, the whole nine yards,’ he told the Los Angeles Times. ‘I’d tell them, “You can have a job like your mother’s, or you can have a job like mine.”‘
He also worked for a time at a candy store around the holidays to buy gifts for his family, saying ‘I had two kids that I was crazy about. I don’t think I’m unique in that.’
Ed was at a bar that he frequented after work, Fagan’s, when he spotted his future wife Donna across the bar for the first time.
Donna admits that she was actually not supposed to be hanging around in the bar for as long as she did. In fact, she had another date she was supposed to go on that evening.
‘I was supposed to go out with a guy that night,’ she admitted on a ‘New Heights’ episode. ‘We were supposed to go to a play and I never made it. Your dad and I talked forever… It was meant to be. It’s just the way it was.’
The pair eventually left that bar, with Donna dropping Ed off to shower after his shift at the mill, before eventually picking up their conversation at a different establishment.
Eventually, after nearly 25 years of marriage, the couple filed for divorce after both kids graduated college. The pair remain friends to this day, with Donna saying, ‘We get along great, it’s just sometimes people move apart.’
Ed has made multiple appearances on his kids’ podcast – including one episode where Travis and Jason denied ever having been fed vegetables growing up.
In response to their comment that they only ate bagel bites and pizza, Ed said, jokingly, ‘What’s on a bagel bite? What’s that red stuff?… It’s a vegetable sauce.’
