Taylor Swift scoffed at suggestions she “hard launched” her first date with Travis Kelce by turning up to watch him play with the Kansas City Chiefs.

The “Blank Space” star had been publicly linked to the NFL linebacker since September, but has now revealed they became a couple long before that.

Swift gave an insight into their relationship timeline for an in-depth interview for Time, which has just named her its coveted “Person of the Year.”

The magazine bestowed the honor on Swift after her record-breaking year, featuring her Eras world tour, which is on track to be the highest-grossing live music tour ever, and the accompanying concert music film, which smashed box-office records. Her tour has proved an economic boon to any town she performs in and Forbes estimated her personal fortune almost doubled in 2023 to be worth more than $1 billion.

But it was also her relationship with one of the best players in the NFL that brought her headlines this year.

Swift explained she first started dating Kelce all the way back in July after he attended one of her concerts then spoke about it on his podcast with his brother and Philadelphia Eagles player, Jason Kelce.

“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” she said.

“We started hanging out right after that. So we actually had a significant amount of time that no one knew, which I’m grateful for, because we got to get to know each other.”

The couple made their first public appearance in September when she attended a Chiefs game alongside his mom, Donna Kelce.

“By the time I went to that first game, we were a couple. I think some people think that they saw our first date at that game?” Swift explained.

“We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date.”

There has always been considerable interest in Swift’s love life, with fans even dissecting her songs for clues, but she opened up on the realities of dating in the public eye.

“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,” she said. “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 previously opened up on how their first meeting actually came to be, after he first spoke about wanting to date her on his podcast.

He explained how “someone playing Cupid” on Swift’s team gave his number to her and she later texted him, saying he was lucky to hear from her.

Kelce added that he was nervous on their first date because he had people around him telling him not “f*** this up.”

“That was the biggest thing to me: make sure I don’t say anything that would push Taylor away,” he told The Wall Street Journal in November.

The footballer also described Swift as a “genius” and “hilarious.”

“Obviously I’ve never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them…. I’ve never dealt with it,” Kelce said. “But at the same time, I’m not running away from any of it…. The scrutiny she gets, how much she has a magnifying glass on her, every single day, paparazzi outside her house, outside every restaurant she goes to, after every flight she gets off, and she’s just living, enjoying life. When she acts like that I better not be the one acting all strange.”