Let’s be honest: We all knew they were getting engaged when she went on his podcast. In 2025, that’s as good as a diamond ring.
Even more tellingly, when Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce sat next to each other earlier this month on the video feed of New Heights, telling the story of how they met, they looked like one of the old couples in When Harry Met Sally. They finished each other’s sentences. They gently mocked each other. They said things like “He’s a human exclamation point” (Taylor on Travis) and “I’m the luckiest man in the world” (Travis on Taylor).
That two-hour podcast interview with Travis’s brother, Jason, was ostensibly just the venue for the announcement of Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, which will be released on October 3. But it was also a rollout for something far bigger—the hard launch of Brand Tayvis. Sure enough, two weeks later, they announced their engagement on social media.
Swift is one of the best songwriters of her generation, but her other world-class talent is for storylining her own life. Over a two-decade career, Swift has turned her attempt to reclaim her master recordings into a tale of feminist revenge, and she’s granted herself the last word about every romantic relationship she’s ever had. She even won her battle with the rapper then known as Kanye West—who interrupted her MTV Video Music Awards acceptance in 2009 by gatecrashing the stage and announcing that Beyoncé had “one of the best videos of all time”—simply by continuing to make music and not praising Adolf Hitler. (The MTV confrontation has had a long afterlife: In the New Heights podcast, Travis echoed his brother describing Swift’s Eras tour as the “most attended of all time” by repeating the words of all time, using West’s exact cadence.)
Now Swift has a new narrative. Behold Miss Americana and her Heartbreak Prince. She is molding Brand Tayvis into the beloved American archetype of the smart if uptight wife and the dumb but lovable husband—think Roseanne and Dan Conner, Marge and Homer in The Simpsons, or Lois and Peter from Family Guy. In her Instagram post today revealing their engagement, she wrote: “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.” The accompanying music was “So High School,” a song from Swift’s most recent album that carries the same message about their relationship: “You know how to ball / I know Aristotle.”
The track is notable for its uncomplicated cheerfulness. She loves his dad jokes, his athletic prowess, his ability to “touch me while your bros play Grand Theft Auto.” Fans have interpreted other tracks on the same album as harsh commentary on Swift’s two previous boyfriends—the actor Joe Alwyn (allegedly a time-waster who took her youth) and the singer Matty Healy (“the smallest man who ever lived”). By contrast, “So High School” is a happily ever after in song form.
Kelce is more than happy to play his part in this narrative. One of his most attractive qualities is a Labrador-ish enthusiasm for fame. A recent GQ profile pictured him wearing a series of so-butch-it’s-camp outfits—a yellow high-visibility vest, waders, a big furry hat—in a Florida swamp, while variously holding a python, cradling an alligator, and levitating on a flyboard. His default expression was one of untrammelled glee. (In one of the pictures, his moody pose and bare chest will give anyone who remembers the Backstreet Boys a powerful surge of nostalgia.) The explicit premise of the article was that Kelce is more soulful than the “meathead jock stereotype” he embodies; his coach raves about his grasp of football tactics and how he sees openings that no one else does. Nonetheless, the joyful lunk is clearly a character whom Kelce is happy to play on television and podcasts. He once told a story on New Heights about thinking that Lewis Carroll’s most famous character was called “Alison Wonderland.”
Swifties also love Kelce because he displays no trace of resentment that his future wife is so successful. (The kind of men who have dismissed Swift as an ingenue, a mere pop star, or a flighty strumpet are a regular target of her songs.) In the GQ profile, Kelce compared her performances on the Eras tour to his own career as tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs: Both of them are stadium-level entertainers. “I hadn’t experienced somebody in the same shoes as me, having a partner who understands the scrutiny, the ups and downs of being in front of millions,” he said. Three hours of dancing and singing on a giant illuminated stage at a stadium in Singapore, he said, was “arguably more exhausting than how much I put in on a Sunday, and she’s doing it three, four, five days in a row.”
Despite the superficial conventionality of their relationship—the wholesome blond girl marries the jock—this very modern form of relaxed masculinity is what Swift’s female fans adore. The advances of feminism have complicated the power dynamics of many heterosexual relationships, as men have had to adapt to the possibility that their wives will want a career, and that that career might pay more than their own. Over the years, Swift has experienced an acute form of that predicament.
More broadly, she also embodies the modern woman’s dilemma: Is it okay to want independence and to be swept off your feet by a traditionally masculine protector figure? For the most eye-opening proof of the continued popularity of this fantasy, I refer you to romance novels, many of which include the most conservative, traditional gender roles you can imagine while also being extremely horny. Thousands of American women come home from a tough day at the office, where they have meetings about key performance indicators and the outlook for the third quarter, and pick up a popular book like Morning Glory Milking Farm, in which a “down-on-her-luck millennial” takes up with a minotaur.
You can also see this tension, between wanting a New Man and lusting after a Neanderthal, reflected in the fact that American women still, by and large, want to date a man who is taller than them. When Swift (5 foot 10) and Kelce (6 foot 5) started dating, one of the persistent strands of commentary was Oh, good, she’ll be able to wear heels again. (On a recent episode of the podcast Not Gonna Lie, its host, Kylie Kelce, bonded with Michelle Obama over the difficulties of dating as women who are both 5 foot 11.)
The tone of New Heights is unremittingly bro-ish, as the Kelce brothers make dumb jokes, crack each other up, and discuss the perils of wearing white pants on the field when caught “in the wrong type of gut situation.” But Jason is regularly interrupted by one of his four daughters; he clearly loves being a hands-on dad. And just like Taylor Swift’s parents, who moved to Nashville to further their daughter’s career, the Kelce family is a tight-knit unit. Though divorced, Ed and Donna Kelce stayed together until Travis was in college, to give him the best chance of succeeding, and remain friendly.
A big hunk. A supportive partner. A man who is sensitive and good with kids but can also chug a beer and dance in public. A man who has reached the top of his own profession and is happy to be with a woman at the top of hers. I mean, come on. Kelce represents a romantic ideal, the idea that you don’t have to compromise. You can have someone who looks perfect on paper, someone of whom your family approves, someone who is hot but not arrogant, someone you love. A woman can have it all.
The post Taylor Swift Writes Her Own Fairy-Tale Ending appeared first on The Atlantic.
