Kelce’s father is a former steel worker who comes from a military family

Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce has made more than $93 million in career NFL earnings, and has plenty to spend on a birthday gift for Taylor Swift. But his blue-collar Ohio father apparently isn’t going to stretch himself too thin for the occasion.

Kelce’s father, Ed Kelce, said that he plans to only spend $10 on a present for his son’s pop star girlfriend this year.

Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce attend the men’s final match between the USA’s Taylor Fritz and Italy’s Jannik Sinner on day 14 of the U.S. Open tennis tournament at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York City on Sept. 8. (Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images)

“You’re not going to crush Taylor Swift with a gift that cost, you know, $100,000. You’ve got to get something that tweaks the strings of her heart that you spend 10 bucks on,” Ed said during an appearance on the “Baskin & Phelps” podcast. “Then she’ll just be all gooey. You’ve got to find something that triggers the emotion.”

Ed, a former steelworker and Coast Guard service member, believes that there’s no point in spending too much on someone like Swift, who has the means to attain anything she wants as a billionaire.

Taylor Swift stands with Donna Kelce after the AFC Championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore on Jan. 28. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

“The amount of money is meaningless,” he said. “There’s nothing they want that they don’t already have. You have to look beyond that. You’ve got to dig down and come up with something special.”

Swift turned 35 on Friday, and is into her second full year in her relationship with the NFL star.

Kelce has faced mounting pressure to propose to Swift after Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen got engaged to actress Hailee Steinfeld at the end of November. Fans have called on Kelce to drop to one knee for Swift on all social media channels as the two are now each officially in the second half of their 30s.

If and when that day comes, Swift will look to embrace Ed and Kelce’s mother Donna as in-laws, but she likely won’t expect high-end gifts from either of the two parents, based on Ed’s philosophy.

While Ed made a career in the steel industry, he comes from a military background.

“Everybody in my family prior to me was in the service,” Ed said on an episode of Travis and his brother Jason’s “New Heights” podcast in February 2023. “We’re also talking about family [that] lived through World War II, so that’s what everybody did because that was the background.”

Taylor Swift turned 35 on Friday, and is into her second full year in her relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images)

Ed did not go into the Army because he had a pre-existing knee injury. He joined the Coast Guard, but had to leave boot camp after it was discovered he had Crohn’s disease.

After joining the steel industry, Ed made sure to bring his sons Travis and Jason to work with him at the mill to show them what that line of work looked like.

“I’d take them there — hard hat, safety glasses, boots, the whole nine yards,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I’d tell them, ‘You can have a job like your mother’s, or you can have a job like mine.'”