Travis Kelce’s next-door neighbor has sensationally claimed that he and Taylor Swift were an item for six months before going public at a Kansas City Chiefs game.

Kelce and Swift confirmed speculation about their romance when the singer appeared at Chiefs vs Chicago Bears at Arrowhead Stadium in September 2023.

But according to Wes Bergmann, who lives next door to Kelce in the exclusive gated community of Leawood, Kansas City, their relationship began long before that.

‘He’s an enigma – on one hand, he’s like this big, tough football player,’ Bergmann said on the RHAP podcast with Michele Fitzgerald and Kellie Nalbandian in February. ‘On the other, he’s going to have about 12 Taylor Swift songs written about him.

‘OK and on that note, I was like the first person to know about any of this stuff. And I tried to tell this woman (podcast host Fitzgerald) a long time ago “they are together, just so you know” and she didn’t believe it!

‘She didn’t believe it, she was like “she only goes for artists”. I beat the validating of her showing up to games and stuff by six months.’

Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift went public with their relationship in September 2023

Swift confirmed the relationship by appearing at a Chiefs game with his mom in 2023

Fitzgerald interjected: ‘She loves a brooding artist. Scrawnier, they’re kind of like womanizers. And then you have him who seems chivalrous, a football player and he has just been winning and crushing.’

Bergmann replied: ‘Yeah, he’s not scrawny. For me, he’s the boy next door!’

Curiously, if Kelce and Swift did start dating much earlier in 2023, it would mean there is an overlap from her brief fling with Matt Healy of the 1975.

The singer of the UK band was briefly involved with Swift in early summer in 2023 – news of their romance surfaced in May that year but a month later, they broke up.

Swift was then sat with Kelce’s mom at the NFL in Kansas City four months later.

That same summer, Kelce admitted on his New Heights podcast that he went to see Swift play in Kansas City and hoped to give her his number after the show – only to learn that he wouldn’t be meeting her.

And while Swift rarely gives interviews these days, when she spoke to TIME magazine in December 2023 she lifted the lid on the early days of meeting Kelce.

‘This all started when Travis very adorably put me on blast on his podcast, which I thought was metal as hell,” she said in the interview. ‘We started hanging out right after that.

Kelce’s neighbor, Wes Bergmann (center), says they dated for ‘six months’ before it was public

Chiefs star Kelce pictured alongside Swift in New York on a date in late December

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‘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 psycH๏τic enough to hard launch a first date.’

Last week, Kelce confirmed that he would not be retiring from the NFL after February’s Super Bowl loss to the Philadelphia Eagles.

The тιԍнт end is expected to open up on that decision in this week’s New Heights episode.

Kelce’s $6million home next to Bregmann was broken into last October, with the Chiefs star losing watches, cash and memorabilia from across his distinguished playing career.

Since then, it has been claimed that Kelce has installed a new camera and lighting system as well as buying two guard dogs.

Kelce had an array of valuable items stolen from his $6million Kansas City property

Kelce’s teammate, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, also had his home broken into the same day.

The NFL sent a warning to every team that an international crime ring could be behind the break-ins, which have impacted players far beyond the Chiefs.

The FBI is investigating the crime wave which has also seen Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow and NBA star Luka Doncic, of the Dallas Mavericks, targeted.

Earlier in February, seven Chilean nationals were charged with burglaries of multiple athletes’ homes, including Mahomes and Kelce.