It turns out Tony Romo knew exactly what he was doing when he referred to Taylor Swift as Travis Kelce’s wife — long before the couple even got engaged.
“I did, kind of, play with the fans. I think I was like, ‘And there’s…’ I think I said, ‘his wife,’” Romo, 45, said on the Thursday, January 29, broadcast of SiriusXM’s The Morning Mash Up. “I did that on purpose and people were like, ‘Do you know something?’ I was like, ‘Nah, I just wanted to make you guys think for a second [and] just mess with you a little bit.’”
Romo went viral in December 2023 when he referred to Swift, 36, as Kelce’s spouse when the pop star attended his Kansas City Chiefs home game against the Buffalo Bills.
“As you see, Kelce’s wife, Taylor Swift, is in the audience,” Romo said during the CBS broadcast, quickly laughing off his apparent mistake. “I’m sorry, girlfriend.”
Tony Romo Says Taylor Swift Relationship Is ‘Net Positive’ for Travis Kelce
Romo’s fellow broadcaster, Jim Nantz, subsequently asked Romo whether he knew “something we don’t know” about the pair’s romantic status.
Swift and Kelce, 36, started dating in summer 2023, making their public debut at one of his Chiefs games the following fall.
“Football is awesome. I’ve been missing out my whole life,” Swift told TIME in a December 2023 cover story of cheering on the Chiefs tight end. “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. 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.”
Kelce, who returned the favor and supported Swift at the majority of her international Eras Tour concerts the following year, proposed in August 2025 after two years of dating.
“He designed [my ring] with this amazing jeweler, Kindred Lubeck. She does all of her gold engraving by hand,” Swift said during an interview with the U.K.’s Heart radio station in October 2025. “I had shown him a video [of the designer] a year and a half ago, and he was just paying attention to everything, it turns out.”
She continued, “When I saw the ring, I was just, like, [gasping]. I was like, ‘I know who made that! I know who made that! And also, you listen to me.’ He did amazing, it was, like, ‘You really know me.’ I didn’t know what I would want, but he did somehow, and that’s kind of a flex.”
Taylor Swift Seemingly Compliments Tony Romo in Field Footage
Amid Swift and Kelce’s romance, Romo has remained one of the pair’s biggest fans.
“People won’t even realize this, but he’s probably doing less than he used to when he was younger,” Romo exclusively told Us Weekly last year of Swift and Kelce’s public romance. “If you get your picture taken going to dinner with your superstar girlfriend, it looks like you’re going out or something. No, he just went to dinner. Almost as if he’s married, going to dinner with his wife or something. He didn’t get photographed when he was going out with his buddies all the time.”
According to Romo, Kelce is “doing far less things” in the spotlight compared to his early years in the NFL.
“It’s just the fact that if you’re written about a lot and it’s not about football, some people are always going to think that it plays a role,” Romo said. “But the truth is that it can be a net positive if you look at it closely.”
