UPDATE 4:01 p.m. ET on 3/4/25:
Bergmann set the record straight on his now-viral comments on Tuesday, March 4. “Omg y’all I’m so sorry and confused,” he wrote via X. “Everything being reported on is none of my business. My contribution to this was taken out of context and said in what I thought was relative obscurity, but it obviously wasn’t.”
Travis and Taylor were public for months before the NFL player moved into Bergmann’s neighborhood. “He moved in November, that’s all I know,” Bergmann continued. “I told Michele, who is a giant fan, hey this is serious. She didn’t believe me for six months. That was the intention of the comment. Again it was taken out of context but I shouldn’t be talking about it anyway. So consider this the last time I do.”
Original story below:
The Challenge alum Wes Bergmann knew about next-door neighbor Travis Kelce’s relationship with Taylor Swift long before the public did.
“He’s an enigma — on one hand, he’s, like, this big, tough football player,” Bergmann, 41, explained during a recent appearance on “The Social Game” podcast. “On the other, he’s going to have about 12 Taylor Swift songs written about him.”
The MTV alum called himself the “first person” to know about Kelce, 35, and Swift’s romance. Bergmann claimed that he “tried to tell” Survivor alum Michele Fitzgerald — who hosts the podcast alongside Kellie Nalbandian — about the courtship but she “didn’t believe it.”
Kelce and Swift, 35, took their relationship public in September 2023 when she attended one of his football games, but Bergmann had the inside scoop months prior.
“I beat the validating of her showing up to games and stuff by, like, six months,” Bergmann continued. “To me, he’s the boy next door.”
Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s Relationship Timeline
Bergmann’s connection to Kelce goes far beyond where they live. The former Challenge winner was once mistaken for the Kansas City Chiefs tight end after photos were snapped by their respective homes.
“We live inside a gated community, and I was exiting the gated community in my brand new beautiful truck recently,” Bergmann said during a “Rob Has a Podcast” appearance in February 2024. “And the paparazzi snapped me, and they thought I was Travis Kelce.”
He continued, “So they published a picture of me in my car and they said something along the lines of ‘Travis Kelce doesn’t love Taylor Swift as much as Taylor Swift loves Travis Kelce.’ So I am apparently his doppelgänger.”
Bergmann noted that he’s been “rooting for” Kelce for a long time. “It is now mainstream cool,” he added at the time. (Kelce, however, has said on his “New Heights” podcast that he isn’t watching season 3 of The Traitors. Sorry, Wes!)
Taylor Swift Feared Her Fame Would ‘Scare’ Travis Kelce ‘Away’
Bergmann hasn’t offered more details about the origin of Swift and Kelce’s romance, but the singer actually has. Swift told Time Magazine in December 2023 that they had privately dated before she made the decision to attend one of his games.
“This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” she said at the time, referring to a July 2023 episode of “New Heights” in which Kelce talked about wanting to give Swift a friendship bracelet. She said that they “started hanging out right after that.”
Swift noted that there was “a significant amount of time” that they spent together before taking things to the next level.
“We got to get to know each other,” she shared. “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.”
