Taylor Swift has opened up about her relationship with Travis Kelce in an interview to accompany her being named Time magazine's Person of the Year.
The Cruel Summer singer revealed that romance had blossomed between the two after the Kansas City Chiefs player put Swift "on blast on his podcast".
In her interview with Time, Swift spoke about how her relationship with Kelce began and the publicity they received following her first public show of support for him at an NFL game.
"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.
"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? We would never be psychotic enough to hard launch a first date."
She went on: "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."
Swift added: "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."
Swift was recognised by the American news magazine after she was selected from a group of nine finalists, including Barbie and the Hollywood strikers.
Taylor Swift (@taylorswift13) is TIME's 2023 Person of the Year https://t.co/oyjR55azCZ pic.twitter.com/m2qbIbd5TX
— TIME (@TIME) December 6, 2023
Time said of Swift's selection: "While her popularity has grown across the decades, this is the year that Swift, 33, achieved a kind of nuclear fusion: shooting art and commerce together to release an energy of historic force."
Swift has had a mammoth year and embarked on her The Eras Tour in March, performing shows across North and South America alongside a slew of special guests including the American singer Phoebe Bridgers and the rock band Paramore.
She also released her concert movie, which was recorded during the US leg of The Eras Tour.
In a continued bid to reclaim her music, the pop star re-recorded her own version of her album 1989, originally released in 2014.
She also released a re-recorded version of her 2010 album Speak Now, which topped the charts following its release in July.
When the Grammy nominations were announced, Swift's name appeared in several categories including Album of the Year, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year for Anti-Hero.
This comes on top of some big wins at the 2023 Billboard Music Awards this year, where the pop star took home 10 gongs, including the award for Top Artist.
Swift has attended a number of high-profile events and was most recently photographed in London at the premiere for the documentary Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé.
She has also been spotted at NFL games supporting Kelce, who was seen with the star in Argentina while she was there performing on the South American leg of her tour.
Next year, following on from the success of her 2023 tour, Swift will be heading across the globe, to cities including Dublin, London, Liverpool, Tokyo, and Melbourne as part of the international leg of her tour.
In 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was named Time's Person of the Year, "for proving that courage can be as contagious as fear".
Other figures to have been named Time's Person of the Year include Britain's late Queen Elizabeth II, climate activist Greta Thunberg, US President Joe Biden and Pope Francis.
Source: Press Association
