Taylor Swift Breaks Silence on Travis Kelce Romance and Clarifies Timeline: 'No One Knew'

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce managed to keep the early days of their romance under the radar.

The singer is Time's 2023 Person of the Year, and revealed in her cover interview (for which she posed with her cat Benjamin Button!) that her relationship with the NFL star, 34, "all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell."

“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," Swift, 33, continued.

That means that by the time the 12-time Grammy winner was spotted at one of Kelce's Kansas City Chiefs games for the first time, in September, "We were a couple," she said.

"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," Swift added.

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The "Blank Space" singer threw Swifties and football fans for a loop as she made a surprise appearance at Kelce’s game on Sept. 24. Swift was spotted watching the game from Kelce's suite alongside his mother Donna, where she was later captured cheering as Kelce scored a touchdown.

She has since been seen at multiple games and out with Kelce, who has also addressed his relationship with Swift on his podcast New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce, co-hosted by his brother Jason.

Last month, Kelce was spotted dancing and singing along at the Eras Tour as he sat with the singer's dad, Scott Swift, in the VIP section. During the show, Swift gave Kelce a shoutout as she changed the lyrics of her final song "Karma" to, “Karma is the guy on the Chiefs coming straight home to me,” causing her athlete beau to flash a big grin. 

After the concert, which was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Swift kept the cute moments coming as she was seen running into Kelce's arms backstage and giving him a kiss.

“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 said in her Time interview.

“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," she continued.

As for the impact she has made on the NFL in terms of how much she has been shown watching Kelce from a suite, Swift said, “I don’t know how they know what suite I’m in. There’s a camera, like, a half-mile away, and you don’t know where it is, and you have no idea when the-camera is putting you in the broadcast, so I don’t know if I’m being shown 17 times or once.”

But “I’m just there to support Travis," the "Cruel Summer" hitmaker added. “I have no awareness of if I’m being shown too much and pissing off a few dads, Brads and Chads.”

Her appreciation for the game itself has also evolved since she and Kelce began dating.

“Football is awesome, it turns out,” Swift quipped. “I’ve been missing out my whole life.”

For more on Taylor Swift and her amazing year, pick up PEOPLE’s 2023 Most Intriguing People of the Year issue, on newsstands Friday.