The Untold Truth Of NFL Matriarch Donna Kelce
Donna Kelce was arguably the NFL's most famous mother even before she was filmed cheering beside Taylor Swift at the Kansas City Chiefs' September 2023 matchup against the Chicago Bears. She'd become a star in her own right months earlier when her sons, Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce, played on opposing teams during the Super Bowl. It was a professional football first, so Donna naturally became the woman every sports journo wanted to interview before and after the big game.
After spending time around Swift, who was in attendance at the aforementioned Chiefs game to watch Travis play, Donna has probably fielded a ton of calls from reporters working in the entertainment industry, as well. We doubt she'll ever dish any details about what's going on with Travis' love life, but she's always game to share stories about what it was like raising two talented sons who can already boast a combined total of three Super Bowl rings, as of this writing. Sometimes, she keeps them humble by reminding them that they used to just be your average teen jocks. "Oh jeez, the smells. Football, hockey, soccer. Their shoes, their rooms. Oh my gosh, it's just a mess. It's like a tornado goes through the house," she said in a video for the clothing retailer Chico's.
Speaking to Glamour about the media's sudden interest in her, Donna Kelce insisted that she's "just a mom." However, she's far more fascinating than she gives herself credit for.
Why Donna Kelce called her father a 'narcissist'
Donna Kelce doesn't talk about her life outside of being a football mom much, but Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce have gotten her to share some interesting details about the years before they entered the picture. Ahead of the "Kelce Bowl," the siblings asked their mom to share her life story on their podcast "New Heights" in February 2023. When the topic of her father, Donald Roy "Don" Blalock, Sr., came up, Donna described him as a "narcissist." Proof of this, she said, was Don's decision to name both her and her brother, Donald R. Blalock, Jr., after himself. Donna revealed that her dad also had a son named James much later in life; her younger half-brother is just two years Jason's senior.
According to Donna, her father struggled with monogamy but kept getting hitched; by the time he died in 2018, he'd given marriage a shot with five different women. When Jason asked his mom if Don was a faithful husband, she said, "Of course not. He's a narcissist."
Donna also helped clear up some confusion Jason had about his grandfather's past. He'd seen a report saying Don had committed treason, but Donna explained that the crime he was accused of was actually "industrial espionage." According to a 1981 Cleveland Plain Dealer report, he got arrested for allegedly stealing blueprints from an equipment manufacturing company where he used to work. However, Donna said that he was never convicted of the crime.
The NFL matriarch's stepmother supported her dreams
Donna Kelce grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. She was just 12 years old when her mother died, and her father eventually remarried a woman named Mary. It can be hard for children who have lost a parent to warm up to new stepparents, and stepparents don't always put in the effort to establish a positive rapport with their stepchildren. However, according to Donna, this was not a Cinderella situation. "If we didn't have her, I don't think we would have made it through," Donna said on "New Heights." "She's just a lovely lady. ... I feel so fortunate that I was raised by her."
Donna confirmed to Jason Kelce that she's the first member of their family to graduate from college, and she has Mary to thank for that. She revealed that her father was sexist, and while he wasn't completely against women working, he believed a more suitable job for his daughter would be one that didn't require a college degree. "He thought I should go to secretary school or something like that," Donna said. But clever Mary came up with a sexist justification for Don to allow Donna to pursue her dream. "My mom says, 'Well, how is she going to catch a man?' So, he sent me to go get married," she said.
Donald Blalock hadn't believed that his daughter was intelligent enough to attend college, but she proved him wrong by graduating and enjoying a long, successful career in the banking industry.
She stood up a date to spend time with Ed Kelce
On "New Heights," Donna Kelce regaled her sons with the story of how she met their father, Ed Kelce. According to Donna, Ed decided to shoot his shot while she was hanging out at a Cleveland bar called Fagan's. "He came up to me with the illustrious, I guess, pickup line, 'Did you say Joe?'" she recalled. Donna denied saying the name, but Ed wasn't going anywhere. "I said, 'Is your name Joe?' And he went, 'No, it's Ed,'" Donna continued. She didn't seem particularly impressed by this cheesy introduction, but she found what Ed had to say afterward interesting enough that she blew off a prior engagement to keep spending time with him. "I was supposed to go out with a guy that night and we were supposed to go to a play," she said. "And I never made it." Donna's sons were stunned to learn that she had stood some poor guy up all those years ago. "[He] probably never took another girl to a play," said Travis Kelce.
When it was Ed's turn to speak to his sons on their podcast, he revealed that there was more to the story. He had just gotten off work when Donna caught his eye, and he was still wearing his cemented-splattered coveralls. He had no car, so he convinced her to drive him back to his house. After he got cleaned up and changed clothes, they went out to another bar.
How Travis Kelce got his name
While discussing the origin of Travis Kelce's name on "New Heights," Donna Kelce debunked Travis and Jason Kelce's long-held belief that he's named after one of the sons of Kurt Russell's character in the 1987 romantic comedy "Overboard." Donna explained, "There was another Travis on a soap opera during the day, and I just had thought he was the most gorgeous man in the whole world." Donna fessed up to lying to Ed Kelce about why she liked the name, and apparently the "Overboard" Travis was the best alternate inspiration source she could come up with. She didn't divulge which soap opera her Travis was on, but Larkin Malloy had started playing Travis Montgomery on "All My Children" two years before Travis Kelce was born.
Apparently, Travis wasn't as fond of his name as his mother was. Donna recalled being at a block party when some of the other parents there started talking to her about this awesome neighborhood boy they had met: "They said, 'There's this great kid named Charles. He is the coolest kid; he's so funny and he's really talented.'" Charles just so happened to be at the party, and when her fellow partygoers pointed him out, Donna realized they were talking about Travis. He'd been introducing himself to everyone in the neighborhood as Charles because he was such a huge fan of NBA great Charles Barkley. "I still want to be Chuck," Travis quipped.
Donna Kelce is a Junior Olympics champ
Jason Kelce told "New Heights" listeners that there are "legends of Donna Kelce's athleticism" in his family. One of them comes courtesy of her brother, Don Kelce, who was a college football player but couldn't defeat Donna in a foot race. Despite her natural speed, Donna's father did not want her to compete in track & field events in high school. However, her sons clearly get their competitive spirit from her; she was so determined to prove herself as an athlete that she started sneaking out of the house to join her school's team at track meets. It's one of those stories that you have to think long and hard about before sharing with your kids someday: Sure, Donna did whatever it took to follow her dreams, but she also went behind a parent's back to do it. "This is where I also get the ability to not listen to my dad," Travis Kelce quipped as Donna shared her story.
One summer, Donna even signed up for the Junior Olympics with some help from her school's track coach. It provided her with the perfect opportunity to prove just how talented she was. "I won several medals for running, high jumping," she recalled. Donna did so well that she scored an interview with Cleveland Heights' local news station. "Laid the groundwork on the Heights field for us there," an impressed Jason Kelce said to his mom.
The NFL matriarch's sons were hungry and destructive
Donna Kelce has pulled off a feat of perseverance that her sons would likely find challenging: raising two growing athletes with an appetite for destruction and lots and lots of food. "The refrigerator was always packed, but it didn't last more than a day or so," she told AP News. "Whole chickens, they would eat lots of pork, ribs. I'd have leftovers in the refrigerator and it never lasted past the day." Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce's passion for a number of different sports besides football, including basketball, wrestling, and lacrosse, helped fuel their hunger. Donna told Forbes that her sons finding so many ways to be active outside the house likely saved a few windows, but not before they had broken some. Having various balls around the house was also a hazard; she told Yahoo! Sports that Jason once busted their car's windshield with a bocce ball.
A casserole dish was another casualty of Travis and Jason's roughhousing. "They were wrestling in the kitchen, and one picked the other up and threw him down on the floor, and the stove literally bounced off the brackets," Donna recalled to The Kansas City Star. Jason and Travis must have been devastated when this shattered the dish containing their dinner.
On "New Heights," Donna sought a public confession from her sons about who was responsible for putting holes in the floor by jumping on the couch. "That was Jason throwing me around like a rag doll," Travis explained.
Donna Kelce made her sons wait to play football
Donna Kelce's sons didn't become Super Bowl champs and likely future NFL Hall of Famers by playing competitive football as soon as it became an option for them. Speaking to the New York Post, Donna explained why she denied Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce the thrill of scoring a touchdown when they were still tykes. "Nobody ever says, 'I was the best peewee football player ever.' And it's not very well organized," she said of the leagues that cater to the elementary school set and their parents. Donna pointed out that the coaches can also have questionable credentials, and Vikings Hall of Famer Cris Carter agreed that this is a major problem in youth football. "Our best coaches are coaching our best players, and that's in professional football. Our worst coaches are coaching the most critical position, and that is the 9-, 10-, 11-year-old people," he said in the documentary "The United States of Football" (via The Atlantic). For Donna, injuries were another big concern.
Jason and Travis were allowed to play football when they reached middle school. Donna later showed Travis some tough love when he got his one shot at playing alongside his brother on their high school team, the Cleveland Heights Tigers. It was Jason's senior year, and Travis was two grades below him. "He flunked French. And I wouldn't take him to summer school," she said of her youngest. "I said, 'No buddy, you screwed up, you gotta pay for this.'"
The hilarious catch she made during a hockey game
For the Kelce brothers, it was hockey, not football, but that was actually their first passion. "They were on skates for most of their life from the age of 3 and up," Donna Kelce told the New York Post. There was even a point when Travis even wanted to go live in Canada to play on a junior league team. "I'm like, 'There's no way I'm letting somebody else raise my kid," said Donna. When the topic came up on "New Heights," she gave her son a good ribbing over his former dream by bringing up his failing grade in French. "[With] your luck, you would have [gone] to Quebec and you would have had to speak French," the NFL matriarch quipped.
Donna, Jason, and Travis also shared a hilarious story about one of Donna's experiences as a hockey mom. According to Jason, he decided to remove his athletic cup while he was out on the ice during a game. Donna, who was watching from the stands, recalled watching it spin in the air after Jason tossed it in her direction. "The puck is in play. And Jason is going down the hockey pants and hucks [the cup] like a grenade over the wall," said color commentator Travis. And then Donna caught it. Something about the incident Donna remembered but Jason did not was that he was told he wouldn't be allowed back on the ice until he replaced his missing equipment.
Why she and Ed Kelce delayed getting divorced
Ed Kelce and Donna Kelce waited until both of their sons graduated from high school to officially end their marriage of almost 25 years. According to Ed, they decided to delay their inevitable divorce because they figured it would be easier on the family to keep everyone together under one roof. "That would have been a nightmare with the logistics, getting kids where they had to be and providing all the support," he said in the Amazon Prime Video documentary "Kelce." So, they were basically enduring what had to be an awkward living arrangement because they didn't want to disrupt their sons' busy sports schedules.
According to Donna, she and Ed did a pretty decent job co-parenting during that time period. "When one of you had to go out of town, another person would help the other child, so it was perfect," she told Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce on "New Heights." Luckily, she and Ed remained team players after they divorced, and they even gave some interviews together ahead of the Super Sibling Bowl. "We're friends to this day," Donna said. She also made sure to let Jason and Travis know that she has no regrets about her marriage because they were the result of it. "I wouldn't be on this show if it wasn't for that," she pointed out on their podcast.
She mistook Jason Kelce's Mummer costume for something else
Jason Kelce was born and raised in Ohio, and Donna Kelce told the New York Post that he and Travis Kelce used to dream about playing together for the Cleveland Browns someday. Instead, Jason found a second family in Philly, where he has remained throughout the entirety of his NFL career. He became the first Kelce brother to take home a Super Bowl ring in 2018, and he paid tribute to a popular Philadelphia tradition while celebrating his victory.
For the Eagles' Super Bowl parade, Jason dressed up in one of the ostentatious Mummer costumes that revelers adorn during Philadelphia's annual New Year's Mummers parade. He also delivered a rousing speech laden with expletives that likely brought a tear to the eye of many a Philly fan. Donna told NBC Sports Philadelphia she had no idea Jason was going to give that speech, and after she received a photo of his costume from Jason's wife, Kylie Kelce, she didn't quite understand what she was looking at. "I'm like, 'Why is Jason dressed like a leprechaun?'" Donna recalled. A friend who was a Philly native had to explain the significance of the costume to her.
The costume's supplier told NBC News Philadelphia that Jason wore it because it was the only one in stock that could accommodate the center's hulking frame. It was originally created for an "Ire-Land of Leprechauns" performance, which explains the presence of the shamrocks that confused Donna.
How this NFL matriarch felt about that coin toss petition
Because Donna Kelce had a son on each team during Super Bowl LVII, some football fans created a Change.org petition calling for her to be given the honor of performing the coin toss during the game. While Donna was flattered by the gesture, she told Glamour, "I never played on the field. I know there's people that are legends in the game that would love to be out there doing a coin toss. I'm happy being the mom and enjoying things from the stands."
Donna also pointed out that the NFL had already planned a pre-game tribute to Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals player who enlisted in the Army and was killed by friendly fire while serving in Afghanistan in 2004. Donna didn't want to distract from this and told GQ, "Somebody that put their blood, sweat, and tears for America is much more important than feeding their kids Cheerios on a Saturday morning." The coin toss was performed by Fabersha Flynt, one of the four Pat Tillman Foundation Scholars who were selected to serve as honorary team captains for the Super Bowl.
The NFL matriarch told Glamour that her goal on game day was to get the full fan experience, not to be treated like a special guest. And while she didn't quite understand why the media and the public were so interested in her, Jason and Travis Kelce's mother said, "It's really kind of fun. I'm having a good time with it."
She admitted to slightly favoring one son over the other
While making the media rounds ahead of her sons' big NFL showdown in 2023, Donna Kelce confessed to Yahoo! Sports that it was getting a bit tiresome to answer the question that pretty much every outlet just had to ask her: which son she wanted to see with a new Super Bowl ring. While she insisted that her familial loyalty was split right down the middle, she'd previously slipped up when ET asked her to pick a favorite. "Right now, Jason's a little ahead because of the grandchildren," she said, referencing the two daughters Jason Kelce and Kylie Kelce had at the time. Kylie was also heavily pregnant with their third daughter when the Kelce Bowl throwdown happened.
Donna tried to course correct during her ET interview by adding, "But I'm sure Travis will take it over soon one of these days. I can't, you know, as a mother, you just can't pick one against the other. It's 50/50 and it always will be." She also had to field that dreaded question from her sons when she appeared on "New Heights" later that year, and when she refused to pick one over the other, Jason took things one step further by asking her who would win "in a battle to the death." Donna cleverly deflected the question by her sons if they would save her life or their father's if they were forced to choose — and they both chose her.
What happened to Donna Kelce's unique football jersey?
Travis Kelce took credit for giving his mother the special split jersey that she wore during the 2023 Super Bowl. The front half is Travis' red Chiefs jersey with his number, 87, and the back half is Jason Kelce's green Eagles jersey with his number, 62. According to Mama Kelce, Jason was not impressed with the shirt the first time he laid eyes on it. "I was coming at him, and the 87's on the front," she recalled on "New Heights." "I had to turn around real quick because I could tell he was pissed." After the game, Donna's jersey was put on display at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, along with the custom pair of shoes that she wore with it. One featured the Eagles logo and the other featured the Chiefs logo, natch.
At the game, Donna showed off the rest of her 'fit while talking to Fox Sports reporter Erin Andrews. She also had a split denim jacket with Eagles and Chiefs branding and earrings with each team logo.
Travis was likely the right son to get that jersey for Donna, as she described him as the "fashionista" of the family on "New Heights." While speaking to Chico's about her style, she also revealed that she and Travis have something in common when it comes to their closets. Donna was asked what her biggest "impulse buy" is, and she replied, "Probably shoes. I'm as bad as Travis."
Donna Kelce's chocolate chip cookie secrets
According to Donna Kelce, her sons both have pretty big sweet tooths. She told "Today" that some of Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce's favorite foods growing up were fruit snacks and Rice Krispies treats. They also enjoyed at least one unprocessed sweet snack food: the humble orange.
But for the 2023 Super Bowl, Donna cooked up something extra special for her boys. She crashed their pre-game interview with Michael Irvin to give them some Tupperware containers full of homemade chocolate chip cookies, which likely had many viewers at home asking the same question: What's her recipe?
Obviously, the most important ingredient is a mother's love. As for the rest of the recipe, it turns out that Donna is not one of those bakers who guards it like it's a priceless family heirloom. In an interview with NBC Sports Chicago, she spilled her secrets for creating chocolate chip cookies worthy of NFL champions. "I use both cake flour and regular flour, one cup of each," Donna revealed. She also microwaves her butter before mixing the dough. "It just makes the cookies creamier," she explained. A sprinkle of cinnamon enhances the flavor, and she refrigerates the dough overnight. "All the flavors mesh in together," the NFL matriarch said of why this step is important. And when it comes to chocolate chips, Mama Kelce's preference is a mixture of white and milk chocolate. Sounds like a winning recipe to us.
Travis Kelce loved seeing his mom with Taylor Swift
Travis Kelce's victory at the Kelce Bowl became old, boring news as soon as Taylor Swift attended her first Kansas City Chiefs game in September 2023. While the tight end and the singer wouldn't confirm if they were dating, users on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, marveled over witnessing Swift yell "Let's f***ing go!" beside Donna Kelce when Travis caught a touchdown pass during the Chiefs' blowout win over the Bears. On "New Heights," Travis revealed that Swift did an awesome job charming his mom and everyone else in her Arrowhead Stadium suite. "To see the slow-motion chest bumps, to see the high-fives with mom, to see how Chiefs kingdom was all excited that she was there. That s*** was absolutely hysterical," he said.
The following week, Swift brought an entourage with her to the Chiefs' matchup against the New York Jets. Her guests included Sophie Turner, Blake Lively, and Ryan Reynolds. Ahead of that game, Donna got a shoutout from Reynolds on X; he tweeted a photo of Donna hanging out with Jake from State Farm at Jason Kelce's game. (That particular Sunday was one of those rare occasions where Donna was able to make it to both sons' games.)
A source told TMZ that Donna thinks Swift is a "a lovely person," and Swift was filmed embracing her during the Chiefs vs. Jets game. So, it seems the Grammy winner has become a Mama Kelce fan, too.