Copyright The Philadelphia Inquirer
ORLANDO, FL – A young mother is sitting in a white lacquered ornate chair that looks fit for a princess while talking with her mother-in-law. They are comparing the differences between boy moms and girl moms. The girls will sit at a table and craft and draw. “A house of boys would never,” the mother-in-law says. The mother wears what her kids call fancy clothes – stretchy, wide-leg jeans, a Disney T-shirt and Chuck Taylors. Her hair is pulled into a low, messy bun. In many ways, it feels just like any family spending time together at Disney World’s Magic Kingdom on this first Saturday in November. Except it’s Kylie Kelce and her mother-in-law, Donna Kelce. They are here on this perfect day, looking out at Cinderella’s castle and recording Kylie’s hit podcast “Not Gonna Lie.” The show knocked Joe Rogan out of his No. 1 spot with its debut. In the podcast’s first year, Kylie fangirled talking to Kelly Clarkson and sweated her way through an interview with former first lady Michelle Obama. But it’s not the celebrity guests that draw listeners each Thursday. It’s Kylie. And we are obsessed. She seems like maybe she is not so different from the rest of us, and that if we just bumped into her at Wawa, we’d become friends. Kylie coaches a high school girls’ field hockey team, drives a green Toyota Sienna minivan and wears a sports bra every day. She teases her husband, Jason Kelce, whom she met on Tinder, about his flip-flops and his dancing. But she also looks at him adoringly. She’s just so normal. (She hasn’t slept eight hours at a time in more than six years! She loves Bluey! She curses!) It doesn’t matter that she is married to a former center for the Philadelphia Eagles and one of the most charming NFL players. Jason is now an ESPN analyst and is half of the wildly popular “New Heights” podcast with his brother, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Yes, Travis happens to be engaged to Taylor Swift. Even Donna has a fan following – she is the most requested guest on “Not Gonna Lie” – and has been in two Hallmark movies and will be on Season 4 of “The Traitors.” As Kylie and Donna talk about favorite rides, Jason eats churros and candied popcorn with their oldest girls, Wyatt, 6, and Ellie, 4. Her mom fixes 2-year-old Bennie’s pigtails. And her father carries a very smiley 7-month-old Finnley on his hip. “I can only be myself,” Kylie, 33, tells us. “I am me.” Two weeks before the Disney trip, Kylie’s in the thick of momming. Her girls keep changing their minds about Halloween costumes. Kylie tries to sneak in lunch – a bowl of chili from which her kids picked out the avocados – to steal away for our Zoom call. “At least they’re eating healthy,” she says from her home studio in suburban Philadelphia. Drawings by her children hang behind her, including a framed picture of a crayon rainbow ripped in half, the preserved evidence of sisterly jealousy. “Who with kids does not have ripped artwork?” she asks. “I love it.” We live in a time when we are conditioned to equate fame and fortune with excess – to stylists and G-Wagons, mansions and house managers. (We’ve watched “The Kardashians!”) So maybe our Kylie fascination and why we tune into “Not Gonna Lie” each week is to see just how much she is like us, how normal she is. And when we say she is normal, what we really mean is that her values are solid. That she believes in hard work and giving back, having fun and setting a good example for their girls. She reaches down and pulls up a half-gallon-sized Ziploc baggie. It’s her makeup bag. The side is tearing and the bag holds an orange tube of CoverGirl Lash Blast Mascara, which she has been using since high school, Vaseline lip balm, bareMinerals powder and bronzer, and some brushes. When Kylie arrives on the set at Disney to tape the Nov. 6 episode, she pulls that same Ziploc out of her canvas light green Lululemon tote. What you see is really what you get, says Kayla Follmuth-Barnett, vice president of brand, design and content marketing at Wave, which produces the show. It’s almost impossible to know when Kylie is recording and when she’s just talking with producers. Her show feels like real life. “Kylie is genuinely authentic at a time when ‘authenticity’ is often manufactured and consistently overused,” Follmuth-Barnett says. Maybe there is something intentional about holding on to who you are. Is the Ziploc baggie a tactile reminder, a physical embodiment of her beliefs? Or does Kylie just keep forgetting to buy a makeup bag when she’s at Target? You’re thinking too much, Kylie says. She doesn’t care about designers and logos. She has owned makeup bags and when something spilled, she had to clean the zipper. The plastic bag works. “This also reminds me that once the Ziploc baggie has given way, you should refresh your makeup. I don’t use my makeup enough to what influencers would say hit pan. I don’t use my makeup that often,” she says. She is practical in a way that grows exponentially when you are a mother of four. “I love being called normal,” Kylie says. “It’s a compliment.” It is the Kelces’ first trip as a family of six to Disney World, one of their favorite places. They don’t stand out because of their celebrity status but because they physically tower over the crowd. (Almost everyone is 6 feet tall. Kylie’s dad is 6-feet-9 inches.) They round a corner into Fantasyland. Wyatt has her hand in DeeDee’s – that’s what the girls call Donna – on her way to Under the Sea, the Little Mermaid ride. Jason is carrying Bennie, and the toddler is grabbing her mom’s shoulder. Kylie is wearing baby Finnley in a carrier. Her mom has Ellie and is pushing an empty double stroller with another stroller tucked underneath. And her dad carries a diaper bag, his phone strapped to his belt. They need more than zone coverage on this trip. “The Kelces are here,” a man in a green Eagles jersey, as if on cue, tells his friend while they wait in line for churros. “His wife is filming a show or something. I saw them but didn’t want to bother them. He was with his family.” Kylie, Jason and the girls wear Disney T-shirts, so new that they still have creases. “I think people would be bored if they spent too much time with us,” Kylie says. They have been asked about a reality TV show, especially after the success of the 2023 Netflix documentary “Kelce,” which focused on the brothers’ run-up to their Super Bowl matchup. “Would you want to watch security footage of your own house? That would be our reality TV.” Kylie grew up in a blue-collar suburb of Philadelphia, the daughter of a union electrician and public school secretary. She spent three years at community college before heading to Cabrini University, in part, to save money, and, in part, because “I am a homebody,” she adds. Her parents worked hard to give their two girls opportunities, something shared by Jason’s parents, who have said they stayed married to provide what they thought was the best life for their two boys. “We want to make sure our kids are held to the same thing we were. Making sure that they realize that they can ask for a million things, but they need to earn it or ask for it for Christmas or a birthday. You’re not just going to get things because you can,” she says. “We are intentional about how they speak to others, how they navigate the world. We want them to go about it in a very kind and polite way. We are just trying to raise kind and somewhat funny humans.” Kylie manages the exploding interest in her family in a way that is pragmatic. She started the show, in part, she says, to cut through rumors about her family, and to talk about things that matter to her, including motherhood and women’s sports. The podcast allows Kylie to walk the line between sharing details about her family and guarding her privacy. “People can listen and you’re just going to get straightforward, blunt, honest truth. If I don’t talk about it at all, it’s because it’s something that I want to keep private,” she says. “We also are doing all of this while we are raising our children.” She refrains from mentioning her famous sister-in-law-to-be, Swift. In part, she has said, because anything she says is turned into a headline. She says it helped that the intense curiosity and money came after marriage and a baby. The couple lives in the same four-bedroom house they bought in 2018 when they got married. The home has trappings of family life – dolls and stuffed animals, a Peloton in a corner, a Costco size package of Charmin on a family room chair. Her parents live nearby and can often be found at her house for pancake breakfasts on Saturday mornings. “I’ve established this life that we feel super grateful for,” she says. “And it was all of these milestones that had already hit where I’m like, I’m good. And that’s still how I live.” Jason and Kylie told the kids about a month ago that they would be going to Disney World the day after Halloween. Kylie confesses that this trip isn’t just for the girls. “Selfishly, it can be for me,” she says. “Bennie might not remember this trip, but I want to remember these moments.” Minnie Mouse stops by to surprise them. The girls smile and move closer to her. Wyatt shows off her polka-dotted Minnie Mouse backpack. Minnie signs I love you. Even baby Finnley is smiling. Jason looks at Kylie and smiles. He takes photos with his iPhone. Kylie cries. So do some of the crew members at so much cuteness and happiness. Her girls’ very existence grounds her. “I never want to do things that I wouldn’t want my kids to see, which is a little bit far removed because my oldest is 6, right? She’s not perusing the internet on her own,” she says. That means giving back, informally, to fulfill teachers’ wish lists and with the Eagles Autism Foundation. Her commitment is personal. Her grandma and mom worked in public schools, so did she for two years as an instructional aid for students with learning disabilities. Her childhood neighbor, who was more like a brother than a friend, has autism. Their girls now call him Uncle Tim. Her oldest daughter started kindergarten this year, not the same public school she attended, but one not far away. Kylie was the Eagles Austism Foundation’s first volunteer, says its executive director Ryan Hammond. Kylie joined after she sent a handwritten note with Jason offering to help. “She’s worked the yard sale, secured permits from the city for our bike ride,” Hammond says. “Regardless of how her life has changed, we’ve remained a priority for her. With four kids and her life, she’s had every excuse to step away. But she stays.” Most days from August through October, you can find Kylie in a field at Lower Merion High School, her alma mater. She’s coached for 10 years, starting so young that the girls just call her Kylie. On a suburban Philadelphia high school field on a September weekday afternoon, Kylie, at 5-foot-11 inches, stands almost half a foot taller than her field hockey girls. It’s one of their last games of the season and the Aces are behind. The rival school is streaming the game. Kylie wears a black polo shirt, black joggers and white running shoes. Her long blonde hair is in a ponytail. The field hockey girls tease Kylie about wearing the millennial uniform of no-show socks and using slang that she has to Google. She corrects them when they don’t spell out thanks in texts. She tells them “thx” is not enough. Coaching field hockey often is an escape from her four young children. She has a nanny most weekdays and says her players “see me when my children were just screaming at me for two hours straight, and I just needed time a minute to breathe and they’ll go get a drink and come back.” She feels like she is making a difference – not just helping develop collaboration and responsibility among the girls, but something more. She was inspired by Jackie Neary, who took a chance on a 21-year-old Kylie as a freshman field hockey player at Cabrini University. Neary raised four kids who often were on the sidelines. “It’s important for them to see young women growing a family and having a profession and not stopping what they love,” Neary says. Still, each year, Kylie wonders if she can keep coaching. “I have to make sure all our schedules are right and that my husband and I are in sync with that,” she says. But at the end of the season, “I talk myself right back into it. It’s something that is still very grounding for me and I love it.” Donna is wearing a denim jacket emblazoned with tiny Minnie Mouse faces as Kylie asks about her favorite Disney World spots. Donna recently moved to Orlando, to Bennie’s chagrin – who has pretended not to remember her name. Kylie has talked about body image with Olympian Ilona Maher and raising teens with Jennifer Hudson. “The first year of guests has just been one after the other of people where I’m like, I don’t know how I fell face-first into getting to speak to these people, but it’s so much fun,” she says. Last December, she shared that her dream guest would be Michelle Obama. By March, she was talking with the former first lady about running for office and what dating is like as a tall girl. Now Kylie’s thinking about another guest: Pink. “She’s incredibly talented musically,” Kylie says of the musician who speaks out on human rights and girls’ empowerment, “but then also all of the things that she has stood for.” The manifestation begins. It’s the personal stories Kylie shares that bring her closest to her listeners. That might be relaying that her morning soundtrack was Mom-mom-mom-excuse-me-mom-mom-mom. Or it is the more difficult topics, like how she survived a miscarriage. Talking to people got her through it. “I think people just want to know they’re not alone in this. The good, the hard, and we’re in this with you,” she says. It’s also why Donna is one of the show’s most requested guests. People want to talk about family; they want to see themselves reflected. Kylie wants the show to be fun, a bright spot in the mostly bro-dominated podcast field. At 45 minutes, it’s designed for busy moms. “We need some good vibes. We need women supporting women and looking at life positively,” she says. Wave, which produces the show, doesn’t share its audience demographics. The show is no longer in the top 10, but was voted best emerging podcast at the 2025 iHeartPodcast Awards. Listeners are supportive – as demonstrated by the questions and comments on Kylie’s social media feed. There are young moms and they are Swifties who fell in love with Kylie and listen for any Taylor tidbits. They are also moms whose children are grown. “They have described it as almost like healing because they’re excited that our generation of women can hear and talk about all of this while they’re going through it,” she says. Kylie is polished as she reads podcast sponsorships from the teleprompter like an experienced news anchor. “One take wonder,” says her producer Emma Samocki, known as Queen Emma on the show and also in Kylie’s phone. The show wraps quickly. She carries Finnley on her hip and heads to the backstage area near the entrance of the Magic Kingdom. “You aren’t supposed to remember any of this,” she jokingly tells her baby of the area for cast members only. She sits down, Finnley won’t stop smiling and blowing raspberries. Kylie is tired. The family took an early flight to Orlando that morning after trick-or-treating in her parents’ neighborhood. The girls were two Annas and two Elsas, with Kylie as Olaf and Jason as Kristoff from the girls’ favorite, “Frozen.” She launched a new segment on YouTube this week, taking viewers somewhere she wants to share. This time it was a field hockey clinic. She’s not sure what comes next. She could easily host her own talk show or just slide away from all of it. For now, she’s loving the podcast. She just hosted Malala Yousafzai for her new memoir at a sold-out event in Philadelphia. She poses for one more photo, doing something she never does: “I’m going to request a side,” she says because Finnley has chewed on her shirt and it’s now very wet on one side. Then she walks up the stairs and back into the Magic Kingdom, where her girls are tugging on hands to start exploring the park. She meets up with Jason and her parents and Donna. Strollers and a diaper bag at the ready. They walk off to Tomorrowland.
