Ed and Donna Kelce raised two boys who not only ended up in the NFL but eventually played against each other in the Super Bowl. Jason Kelce and the Philadelphia Eagles took on Travis Kelce and his team, the Kansas City Chiefs, in the 2023 game. The Chiefs won by a narrow margin, but both brothers are Super Bowl winners. (Jason won with The Eagles in 2017.)
The boys have become increasingly famous with the success of their New Heights podcast and Travis’s relationship with pop star Taylor Swift. By extension, Ed and Donna have gotten more attention, too. Here’s everything to know about the parents of these star athletes.
Who is Donna Kelce?
Donna grew up in a suburb of Cleveland. Her mother passed away when she was only 12 years old, and her father remarried to her stepmother, Mary, with whom she had a close relationship. On an episode of New Heights, Donna stated, “By the grace of God, if we didn’t have [Mary], I don’t think we would have made it.”
Donna, like her sons, was an athlete, but her father was against women in sports. Mary supported her, and she eventually competed at the Junior Olympics in track and field. Though she had trained in secret from her dad, she won. Donna went on to college at Ohio University and eventually went into finance, working for Mastercard and then a local Cleveland bank specializing in commercial real estate.
Who is Ed Kelce?
Like Donna, Ed is from Cleveland and an athlete, playing football in high school. He went on to work in the steel industry at a mill. He told the Los Angeles Times that he’d bring his boys to visit from time to time.
“I’d take them there—hard hat, safety glasses, boots, the whole nine yards,” he said. “I’d tell them, ‘You can have a job like your mother’s, or you can have a job like mine.’”
They both went with a third option.
How did Ed and Donna meet?
Donna was on her way to a date with a different guy when she dropped by Fagan’s bar in Old Cleveland Flats. Ed chatted her up, and she had such a great time, she never met up with the other man.
“I was supposed to go out with a guy that night. We were supposed to go to a play, and I never made it. Your dad and I talked forever,” Donna told her sons on New Heights. “It was a good play, too! I really wanted to see it.”
Ed shared that he’d gone to the bar after work and wasn’t in his finest attire.
“I’m in coveralls that are covered in cement,” Ed picked up the story. “We started talking, and she gave me a ride home. She came in, and I told her, ‘Hold on, let me change.’”
Ed took a quick shower and then brought her to another bar.
“It was meant to be. It’s just the way it was,” Donna said.
They were married in the late 1970s and raised their children in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
How many kids do Ed and Donna Kelce have?
Donna and Ed only have two children, their football stars Jason and Travis. Jason was born in November 1987, and Travis was born in October 1989. Donna has suggested that their proximity in age led to a lot of fights and competition.
In an interview on the Today Show, she discussed breaking up “a lot of fights” when they were kids.
“Everything was a competition,” she explained. “It was a competition to see who could get to the table first, who could get to the front seat of the car—this is just typical sibling rivalry. They egged each other on.”
Both the boys went to the University of Cincinnati and played college football, so the competition pushed them even further.
Are Donna and Ed still together?
The pair divorced shortly after their sons finished college after a quarter century of marriage. However, they remain friends. On New Heights, Donna said, “I don’t hate him. We’re friends to this day. We get along great. We were like a tag team with you two. We got to do all sorts of fun things. When one of you had to go out of town, the other person would help with the other child. It was perfect.”
But she added that “sometimes people move apart.”
The former couple did admit in the 2023 documentary Kelce that they chose to stay together longer for the sake of their sons.
“If we had split as we probably both would have preferred, that would have been a nightmare with the logistics, getting kids where they had to be and providing all the support,” Ed said in an interview.
Ed moved from Cleveland to Philadelphia to be closer to Jason and his grandkids. Donna continues to travel regularly for appearances and to watch her sons play. She can often be spotted in the stands on game days.
What do they think of Taylor Swift?
Taylor Swift was first publicly linked to Travis in September 2023, attending a game at Arrowhead Stadium to launch their romance. She seemed to hit it off with Donna immediately and sat beside her in the VIP box throughout the season. She met Ed in October 2023, at the Chiefs and Denver Broncos game.
“I’ll tell you something very special that I noticed about Taylor the first time I met her. She gets up to go get a drink or something, and she starts picking up empty bottles, cans, plates that are scattered around. And that really, to me, said a whole lot,” he told People of their first meeting.
Donna also seems to think Swift is talented and down-to-earth, though she’s not really a pop music fan.
“My era was Earth, Wind and Fire [and] Chaka Khan,” she said, when asked about being a Swiftie. “That’s more my music. But obviously, talent is talent.”