By now you’ve probably heard the news, or maybe just the joyful squeals emanating from TikTok or Swifties in your neighborhood: On Tuesday, Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift, the Kansas City Chiefs football star and the multiplatinum pop princess (or, as the happy couple refer to themselves, “your English teacher and your gym teacher”) announced their engagement.
The news was not an out-of-the-clear-blue-sky surprise. For one thing, the couple have been dating for two years. For another, the announcement was so carefully choreographed, with such a long and deliberate lead-up and such an obviously elaborate plan for maximum media saturation, that it might as well have been the P.R. plan for a summer tent-pole movie.
First came the September issue of GQ, with Mr. Kelce on the cover. Then, Ms. Swift joined him on “New Heights,” the podcast he hosts with his brother Jason, which broke the world record for most concurrent views for a podcast on YouTube. It also broke news, when she dropped the title and release date of her next album, “The Life of a Showgirl.” Finally, on Tuesday afternoon, the pair broke the internet by posting engagement pictures on each of their Instagram accounts.
In a lush garden, there was Mr. Kelce down on one knee, ring in hand; there was Ms. Swift with her hands resting on his cheeks; there was the close-up of a diamond as big as the Ritz, all set to Ms. Swift’s “So High School.” And just beyond the margins of the photo, perhaps, a huge team of stylists and photographers’ assistants, craft service offerings, fans, lights and so on.
You might think anything that deliberate would generate a wave of backlash, a tsunami of cynicism. And yet judging from the early returns on social media, the general feeling appeared to be, well, delight. “Are my daughter and I sitting in a coffee shop crying bc I am leaving her at college today? No. Are we crying because Taylor and Travis are getting married? Absolutely,” read one fairly typical sentiment.
The news feels like a tiny piece of joy in a sea of troubles, a little bit of brightness in the dark. Yes, it was probably all micromanaged. It still made me happy — and hopeful. Maybe there are still good men. Maybe love still wins. And maybe we were seeing a new paradigm for the old pairing of beautiful female star and successful male athlete.
On paper, stars and athletes have plenty in common: fame and money; a life lived on the road, in the public eye; the obligation to bear the public’s projections and fantasies. But too often, these dream-team marriages end badly. Especially when the athlete finds himself asked to share — or even cede — the spotlight.
Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio were Mr. and Mrs. America, the most famous movie star in the world and the hero ballplayer, but their marriage lasted only nine reportedly stormy months. According to Richard Ben Cramer’s biography of DiMaggio, the couple were on their honeymoon in Japan when Monroe was invited to perform for troops in Korea. Alone.
Go ahead, DiMaggio told her. “It’s your honeymoon.”
From the stage, she called him. “Do you still love me, Joe?” she cooed. “Do you miss me?” He said he did. It sounded awfully curt.
“Joe, you never heard such cheering,” she told him, when they were reunited. “Yes, I have,” he replied.
As Mr. Cramer put it, “Joe did not appreciate being a prop in her show.”
Travis Kelce, by contrast, seems entirely delighted to be a prop in Ms. Swift’s show. Last summer, he made a surprise appearance on her Eras Tour, where he put on a tuxedo and pretended to revive her during the song “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.” The recent podcast episode was full of his descriptions about how he was the one with the crush and how earnestly he applied himself to get her to like him.
“He was just like standing outside of my window with a boombox,” Ms. Swift recalled, “just being like: ‘I want to date you! Do you want to go on a date with me? I made you a friendship bracelet! Do you want to date me?’”
Regarding her decision to say yes, he likes to say he’s “the luckiest man in the world.”
Was it all just a pose? Listen to the podcast and decide for yourself, but I don’t think so. At a moment when women’s professional ambitions are being cast as anti-family, and boys are being trained to believe that emotions are weakness, wearing your heart on your sleeve — for the self-declared childless cat lady, the president’s punching bag, the object of suspicion of so many of your own fans — qualifies as some serious role model behavior.
I’m not the only jaded consumer of celebrity news who felt the love. Donald Trump, who so recently opined “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” was moved to weigh in: “I think he’s a great guy and I think that she’s a terrific person. So I wish them a lot of luck.”
Jennifer Weiner, a novelist, writes frequently about gender and culture.
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