Amid Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce’s growing careers in and out of the NFL, and her family’s connection to Taylor Swift, Donna Kelce detailed life in the limelight. Donna Kelce knows places where she can hide.
Still, when the mom to NFL superstars Travis Kelce—who has been dating Taylor Swift since 2023—and Jason Kelce is spending time with her sons, she admits it can be difficult to find privacy.
“We can’t go anywhere really,” Donna said in a conversation with Tina Knowles, Mandy Teefey and Maggie Baird for Glamour published Oct. 3. “If we want to do something, you have to rent out the restaurant or movie theater or whatever. I do get to sneak away every once in a while, and we go to places that nobody knows where they are.”
However, in comparison to the mothers of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles, Selena Gomez and Billie Eilish and Finneas, Donna—who shares Jason and Travis with ex Ed Kelce—appreciates she got to experience more normalcy with her kids.
“I think you just bring things up that they did when they were 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥ren to just show them that they’re like everybody else—how many broken windows there were, how many times I had a call from the neighbor,” she explained of how their normal foundation supports her sons’ growing fame. “They were very rambunctious.”
Donna continued, “I think it’s just bringing them back to their 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘥hood—what they’re most grateful for and where they were able to have a platform to grow.”
And while she may not get to spend time with her sons in public like she used to, Donna is able to see a more normal side of the NFL players behind closed doors, especially when it comes to seeing Jason be a dad to daughters Wyatt, 5, Elliotte, 3, and Bennett, 20 months, whom he shares with wife Kylie Kelce.
“Watching your son be a father is just like, ‘How can they be so tender and be such a maniac out on the field?’” Donna added. “Travis is a good uncle, and Jason’s a great dad, and it’s just very heartwarming to know that they have that within them to be very nurturing, very kind, very gentle—especially with girls.”
Donna isn’t the only one who has felt the whiplash of her family’s growing notoriety. Both Jason and Travis have spoken out about their own experiences with it, as well as how their parents are handling it from their perspective.
“Everybody’s loving it,” Travis told CBS Mornings last month of his family’s acclimation to the limelight. “Mama Kelc is having so much fun. I think my dad is slowly getting more comfortable with it and Jason has always been a pro at it.”
Meanwhile, Taylor has also spoken out before on how her boyfriend’s ability to handle public scrutiny is just one reason that they work well as a couple.
“When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” Taylor explained of her public relationship with Travis to TIME in 2023. “The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”
