Why Travis Kelce’s Dad Ed Plans to Spend Around $10 for Taylor Swift’s Birthday Gift….See More

Travis Kelce’s father Ed Kelce shared that he believes the amount of money spent on a birthday present won’t impress Taylor Swift, which is why he’ll be looking to get her something that meaningful.

Ed Kelce has Taylor Swift’s birthday present all mapped out. Are you ready for it?

The father of Travis Kelce—who has been dating the “Cruel Summer” singer for over a year—knows that when it comes to getting her, or even sons Travis and Jason Kelce a present, you have to think outside the box.

“Buying Taylor a present is like trying to buy Jason or Travis a present,” Ed explained on the Dec. 12 episode of the Baskin and

Phelps podcast, released one day before her 35th birthday . “There’s nothing they want that they don’t already have.”

Ed—who shares Travis and Jason with ex-wife Donna Kelce—added, “You can’t go that route.”

“You have to look beyond that. You gotta dig down and come up with something special,” he continued. “The amount of money is meaningless. You’re not going to crush Taylor Swift with a gift that cost, you know, $100,000.”

Instead, Ed believes the way to the Grammy winner’s heart is by getting something meaningful—regardless of the price tag.

“Get something that tweaks the strings of her heart that you spend 10 bucks on,” he said, “and then she’ll just be all gooey. You got to find something that the triggers the emotion.”

Ed also couldn’t help but gush over his whole family, noting that daughter-in-law Kylie Kelce’s podcast has been incredibly popular, as well as sharing how much he’s enjoying life as a grandpa to her and Jason’s daughters Wyatt, 5, and Elliotte, 3, and Bennett, 21 months, as well as their new baby on the way.

“I’m having a lot of fun right now between the grandkids and the boys,” he shared. “I’ve got a pretty full life.”

And when it comes to whether or not his grandkids will take after their family in the sports department? Ed’s not 100 percent positive just yet.

“I’m sure they’ll do something,” he said. “As far as athletes, as far as what they’re gonna do, you know my philosophy has always been you help them find [their] passion and then you feed it. Whether it’s sports or art or music or dance or whatever—you gotta be there for your kids when they find what they wanna do.”

But he does think they’re set up for athletic success, adding, “Their mother’s a hell of an athlete, not to mention what their father and their Uncle Travy did.”

For a deeper dive into “Uncle Travy” and his life beyond the football field, keep reading.

1. Travis Kelce may be inextricably linked to Kansas City, Mo., for life, but he grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

And the man represents, shouting out his hometown instead of his alma mater, University of Cincinnati, during game broadcasts that include player introductions.

Which, as you might guess, has irked some fellow alums.

“It’s not because I don’t appreciate the time I had at the University of Cincinnati, because I do, I cherish it dearly,” Travis said in 2019 when he and big brother Jason Kelce were inducted into the Cleveland Heights High School Hall of Fame. “But there was a time when I was at Cincinnati that it wasn’t easy for me. It was tough. I got my scholarship taken from me. I did a lot of dumb things. I’m sure a lot of people in this room know someone from Heights that’s done a lot of dumb things. To all my friends, I was that guy.”

And the Heights weren’t just special to him, he continued, but “to every single person up here. How diverse this place is. It builds something in me. Every single thing I do is for this city. It sounds cliche, but I promise you, every single thing I do out there — when you see me dancing in the end zone, that’s Cleveland Heights, for you, right there.”

After the Bearcats’ undefeated 2009 season that included a Big East title, Travis failed a marijuana test ahead of the 2010 Sugar Bowl after partying too hard on New Year’s Eve in New Orleans.

Not only did he miss the bowl game, the NCAA suspended him for the 2010 season and he lost his scholarship. Finding himself without room and board, he moved in with Jason (literally into his brother’s room in the house he shared with some teammates) and took a job as a telemarketer that entailed him asking anyone who picked up if they had thoughts about the Affordable Care Act.

They did, and Travis could not wait to get back on the field.

3. Travis played hockey, baseball and basketball before getting into football, and he was a quarterback in high school. In fact, he was a two-star QB recruit for Cincinnati, and only ended up switching to tight end as a condition of his reinstatement to the team after his suspension.

“We had an awesome quarterback at the time in Zach Collaros and we needed some help in the run game as well as the passing game,” Travis told Arrowhead Pride after he was drafted by the Chiefs in 2013, “so I talked to coach Butch Jones, who was my coach at the time, and he said we need a tight end and my skill-set, athleticism and my direction all transferred over and it worked out perfect for me.”

Or, as he put it to GQ in 2017 while rehashing his un-shining moment, “Everybody my entire life had been telling me I was a tight end anyway.

4. The house at 127 W. Nixon St. where Travis bunked with Jason and some fellow Bearcats was the scene of a lot of beer-infused shenanigans.

The brothers “used to love playing Nintendo 64 for hours, smashing the controls and chugging beers at the same time,” college friend and teammate Tom DeTemple told the New York Times before the 2024 Super Bowl. “They would just come up with these random drinking games while playing, and they were incredibly good at it.”

5. And suffice it to say, Travis is extremely proud of being a Bearcat.

“It’s all about Cincinnati, baby,” he told reporters before the 2023 Super Bowl, which the Chiefs got to by beating the Bengals in the AFC Championship Game. “I’ve always been extremely prideful of coming from the University of Cincinnati. I finally got my diploma. I try to help out as much as I can. I go back to the university when I can. I just miss being around all those players that I played with, and all the people I met along the way there that have always been in my corner throughout the ups and downs of life.”

And when he was down in the eyes of the NCAA, he continued, “The players, the coaches, the staff that was at the university at the time—really believed in me to be able to turn things around and do better for myself. That was huge for me at the time.”

6. Almost a decade after leaving college to enter the draft, Travis earned his degree in interdisciplinary studies in 2022—but didn’t pick up his diploma until April 2024 during a surprise commencement ceremony after he and Jason taped a live episode of New Heights at Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Arena.

The graduate was already holding a can of beer as he approached the dean for his congratulatory handshake, after which he promptly chugged it.

And Travis was going to graduate in 2022 but he missed his flight.

7. Largely due to his off-the-field issue, Travis ended up only the fifth tight end picked in the 2013 NFL Draft, going first in the third round to the Chiefs. After which coach Andy Reid, who’d previously coached Jason in Philadelphia, asked the elder Kelce sibling to vouch for Travis.

Andy and Travis have three Super Bowl rings to show for Jason’s endorsement.

8. His hype music may have changed since, but for years Travis listened to Randy Newman’s “Burn On” before every game.

“I’m an east side of Cleveland kid so growing up, I don’t know why, but this song brings me back to thinking about family and thinking about where I am in life and how much I appreciate it,” he said on the NBC Sports podcast PFT Live in 2017.

Let us explain: It’s in the opening credits of Major League, the ultimate Cleveland sports movie.

9. Everyone, including Travis, is mispronouncing his last name.

While he and Jason have just gone with Kelce sounding like “Kel-see,” it actually rhymes with “else.”

Travis’ teammate Chris Jones fired off that bombshell on Inside the NFL in January—”F–king crazy, right?”—and the brothers confirmed as much when they confronted their dad Ed Kelce about it on their New Heights podcast.

“Why in the world did you change your name out of nowhere and now we are Kel-see?” Jason asked. “Why did we think that our name was Kel-see for the first 24 years… 27 years of my life, 25 of Trav’s?”

Ed admitted he “got tired of correcting people” but urged his son to “do whatever you want.”

10. The No. 87 Travis has worn throughout his time in the NFL is a tribute to Jason, who was born in 1987.

“If there is a Kelce legacy, two brothers making it to the NFL, it all started in 1987, because this big guy was born in 1987,” Travis explained to NFL Films ahead of the 2023 Super Bowl featuring his Chiefs squaring off against Jason’s Philadelphia Eagles.

11. Travis’ foundation 87 and Running has been a longtime benefactor of Operation Breakthrough, a nonprofit learning center in Kansas City that the athlete has worked with since his first visit in 2015 to read The Cat in the Hat to the kids.

Yes, reader, he wore the hat.

Since then, Travis has invested in the program’s Smart Lab and bought the former muffler shop next door so they could expand and create their Ignition Lab, where the young scholars converted old cars that could’ve ended up on the scrap heap into working electric vehicles.