In the day leading up to the first show of the three-night run of Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour in Miami, rumors began to swirl that a certain septuagenarian would be in attendance. First she was spotted receiving a friendship bracelet from a fan. Then, a few hours before Swift took the stage, it was all but confirmed via another fan sighting that was soon blasted out to thousands more on social media: Donna Kelce had landed at the “Eras” tour.

Why was Taylor Swift’s massive fan base, not to mention outlets like People magazine, paying such close attention to the concertgoing habits of one baby boomer? Because she’s not just any baby boomer—she’s Mama Kelce, the mother of Swift’s all-important boyfriend, Travis Kelce. As the Taylor–Travis relationship has become a worldwide obsession over the past year, it hasn’t just cemented Swift’s place at the very center of pop culture or skyrocketed Travis Kelce’s fame to a new level. It’s also made an unlikely star of a 72-year-old football mom.

Make no mistake—anyone who is even remotely in Swift and Travis Kelce’s orbit receives an outsize amount of attention for it. This is why some of Swift’s backup dancers now have followings in their own right and why people who don’t keep up with football might know the name Brittany Mahomes. Travis’ brother, Jason, who also played in the NFL until recently, and his wife have also become leagues more famous thanks to their association with Swift. But with her constant presence at football games alongside Swift, her media full-court press, and the possibility that she could one day be, some fans hope, Swift’s mother-in-law, it is Donna Kelce who has emerged as the most interesting new figure in the Swift extended universe.

Before her younger son began dating one of the most famous women in the world, Kelce was a pretty regular person—she had a career in the banking industry and was married to Travis and Jason’s father, Ed Kelce, until the boys were young adults. She still presents as a regular person, with her big glasses and trademark shoulder-length blond hair and bangs. But she also hasn’t been regular for a long time in that she’s the mother of not one but two well-known NFL players, both of whom have been on Super Bowl–winning teams. The more they succeeded, the more people started recognizing her too. In 2022 a fan of Travis’ team, the Kansas City Chiefs, went viral for personally thanking Donna for raising him. Also that year, Mama Kelce got her first taste of national notoriety when she made headlines for attending both of her sons’ playoff games, 1,300 miles apart from each other, on the same day. The NFL’s main Twitter account shared real-time updates on her trip from Florida (where Jason’s team, the Eagles, was playing) to Missouri. (Remember the obsessive tracking of Taylor Swift’s plane leading up to this year’s Super Bowl? Donna Kelce did it first.) She even asked Travis a question in the press conference after his game—Mama Kelce, it was turning out, didn’t mind a little attention. It must run in the family, because her sons also took steps to raise their profiles that year, launching a podcast together called New Heights.

The next NFL postseason took things up another notch, as Travis’ and Jason’s teams both made it to the Super Bowl. Their mother received a wave of press coverage in the lead-up to the so-called Kelce Bowl, going on the Today show and telling USA Today that she was not rooting for either team but for the offense—i.e., whoever had the ball. There was even a petition for her to do the game’s coin toss. She got another moment in the spotlight during a live interview with Travis and Jason on the NFL Network the week of the game, when she surprised the brothers on air with two batches of cookies. At the game itself, Kelce was celebrated for wearing a custom jacket featuring both of her sons’ jersey numbers and team colors. The Chiefs won, and a clip of Kelce celebrating with Travis and consoling Jason tugged at heartstrings everywhere. When it was all over, Business Insider called Kelce “arguably the most in-demand woman of this year’s Super Bowl—behind only Rihanna, perhaps” (Rihanna being that year’s halftime performer).

To the extent that Kelce had developed a public persona, it was that of a selfless, do-anything-for-her-kids mother. She was dowdy, but that was part of her unthreatening, humble Midwestern appeal. She was also kind and fair—both sons were her favorite. All this made her a marketer’s dream, and before the Super Bowl was even through, she had deals to promote products like Bud Light and Kind snacks. The NFL saw her value as well: When the league released ads touting its new season the following August, Travis and Jason were front and center, but Donna earned a cameo too. In the ad, she makes a flirty comment about another player in the league, Raiders quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo—add “playful” to the list of Mama Kelce’s likable qualities. It’s funny to think that she was probably the country’s most famous NFL mom at that point, and yet this was nowhere near as famous as she would soon become.

Swift famously hard-launched her relationship with Travis by showing up at one of his games at Arrowhead Stadium in September 2023. Donna Kelce was there that day, which didn’t escape observers’ notice—wasn’t it a little early to be hanging out with the parents? As Swift attended more games, the floodgates were open for her fandom and others watching to scrutinize everything about the new relationship, including the body language between Mama Kelce and Swift. (They usually appeared comfortable together, sometimes hugging and whispering—there was even that time they swag surfed.) As the season wore on, Kelce nabbed more media appearances and sponsorships—if she was already the ultimate mom, one of her sons dating wildly popular all-American Taylor Swift only made her more so. But actually talking about her son’s relationship, as interviewers inevitably wanted to, sometimes proved challenging.

Kelce’s first big interview after Swift’s arrival on the scene was with Today in October 2023. Here’s what she said about the pop star: “It’s fairly new, so I don’t like to talk about it. It’s just one of those things where, you know, obviously everybody saw me, I was in the boxes with her, and yeah, it’s just, you know, another thing that’s amped up my life.” The hosts pressed on: But what was she like? “It was OK,” Kelce answered, with a tone that made OK sound more like “slightly better than being tortured.” It was an odd exchange for sure, which many of those watching on social media quickly picked up on—and was that an eye-roll from Kelce? Some also interpreted it negatively when, around the same time, Kelce told People that she hadn’t considered herself a Swiftie before her son started dating the singer. As much as it sounded like a mother being unusually honest about not liking her son’s new girlfriend, apparently that was unintentional: The Wall Street Journal later reported, in a magazine profile of Travis, “Donna Kelce still berates herself for how she handled a question about Taylor on the Today show. Trying not to sound too enthusiastic, she came off underwhelmed.”

It’s easy to imagine that Kelce isn’t used to all this fuss around her, and that she’s just a normal lady who hasn’t been media-trained by expensive publicists. I think that’s true enough, but the more interviews she does and the more sponcon-filled her Instagram account becomes, the more I wonder what her relationship with fame is. Her son Travis has sometimes been criticized for wanting it too much. Is Donna Kelce just making the most of all the opportunities that have come to her, or is she some sort of publicity mastermind? The person who seemed exasperated being asked to talk about Swift on Today hasn’t stopped, in the months since, putting herself in situations where she’ll be asked about the pop star. To be fair, she appears to have gotten a lot better at it, and much of what she’s communicated about Swift and her relationship with her has been positive. “He’s happier than I’ve seen him in a long time,” she said of her son in November 2023. That same month, she praised Swift’s movie version of the “Eras” tour. At February’s Super Bowl, which the Chiefs won again, Swift and Donna Kelce walked onto the field after the game holding hands. Swift seems as if she’s generally big on hand-holding, but still, it’s pretty notable: I struggle to think of any other time I’ve seen or heard of a girlfriend holding her boyfriend’s mother’s hand!

This fall has brought even bigger achievements: a Glamour cover—where she was joined by the mothers of Beyoncé, Selena Gomez, and Billie Eilish—and, soon, cameos in two Chiefs-inspired Hallmark movies. The Glamour cover came with some carping about whether Kelce “deserved” it as much as the other moms. She gave a speech in conjunction with the Glamour piece that is revealing for how unpolished Kelce appears in it—as much as she seems as if she’s everywhere, she still is relatively new to all this. And she also hasn’t fully cured herself of her tendency to occasionally offer up surprising commentary on Travis and Taylor. In September, on the red carpet for Grotesquerie, a Ryan Murphy series that features Travis in one of his first acting roles, E! News asked Kelce what her favorite thing about Swift is. “Yeah, I don’t really … it’s still new. I don’t really have any profound thoughts or anything like that.” Still new? They’ve been dating over a year, and Mama Kelce and Swift have spent ample time together, which there’s photographic evidence to prove. Kelce recovered slightly by continuing, “We just have the best time cheering Travis on,” which is nice, but still oddly unspecific to Swift. In the same interview, Kelce seemed to say some undermining things about Travis’ acting career and how you have to let kids fail sometimes. It was definitely not a vote of confidence, and I wonder if it earned her a call from Tree Paine.

If we’re being generous, we can probably chalk these statements up to Kelce slightly fumbling her words again. Some of Swift’s fans have balked at her comments, but it appears as if most have grace for her and her efforts to avoid stepping in exactly this sort of shit. But I think people also get a kick out of her and the way she, whether or not she means to, seems to be one of the only people in the world right now who’s not that impressed with Taylor Swift. This may result in fewer sponsorships than her role as an NFL supermom, but that was always a little condescending