In a dimly lit dining room in Miami, a waiter places a course of hamachi crudo in front of Travis Kelce. “We don’t get fresh fish like this in Kansas City,” Kelce says. We are sitting in a horseshoe-shaped booth, and Kelce’s voice can just be heard over that of the young woman on the restaurant’s stage, covering Sade’s “The Sweetest Taboo” and other quiet storm standards. Kelce did not encounter fish like this—raw, finely sliced, opalescent—growing up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, either. “Red Lobster was the nice spot for us to go to as a kid. We used to go there, see the lobsters in the tank like we were at an aquarium. We put on pants for that shit.”
Kelce is here, in the swank, lean-protein-and-rich-people capital of the world, not just because it is a comfortable off-season home for a 35-year-old multimillionaire. Kelce is here in South Florida to get back to his roots, to reunite with Fort Lauderdale–based speed-and-agility coach Tony Villani. Villani trained Kelce for his NFL combine more than a decade ago and has worked with Kelce during the summers for most of his professional career. Kelce took a hiatus from Villani a few years ago, when the Kansas City Chiefs tight end moved his off-season operations to Los Angeles, near his burgeoning second career in film and television. Now, though, Kelce has come back east to regroup from last season’s lopsided defeat in the Super Bowl.
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“Win a Super Bowl is the only goal,” Kelce says. “It’s the only goal. It’s every goal.” It’s been nearly four months since that defeat, and Kelce is still hard on himself about it. “I think it might have slipped a little bit because I did have a little bit more focus in trying to set myself up. And opportunities came up where I was excited to venture into a new world of acting and being an entertainer,” he says. “I don’t say this as ‘I shouldn’t have done it.’ I’m just saying that my work ethic is such that I have so much pride in how I do things that I never want the product to tail off, and I feel like these past two years haven’t been to my standard.” He adds, “I just have such a motivation to show up this year for my guys.”
His past 24 hours have been ridiculous. Yesterday he woke up at five to drive to the Everglades for this story’s photo shoot. He spent 12 hours trudging through swamps and cradling alligators and riding airboats. From there he drove to the airport to catch an evening flight to Kansas City for a children’s hospital charity event that night. The next day, he drove to the airport, caught a flight back to Miami, and came right to dinner. At some point in this itinerary, Kelce got in a workout. And, after he’s done with me, he’s due to interview Shaquille O’Neal for an episode of New Heights—the podcast he cohosts with his brother, former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, which was licensed by Wondery last year in a deal reportedly worth $100 million. Beside the plate of hamachi is a cup of coffee, the only hint that he might be experiencing some fatigue.
Coat by Dolce & Gabbana. Pants by Lu’u Dan. Boots by L.L.Bean. Hat by Gardenheir. Sunglasses by Gucci. Watch by Hublot. Necklace by Alex Moss.
Kelce is not, to be clear, letting his squandered shot at a historic Super Bowl three-peat or his punishing off-season training stop him from having fun. His unapologetic zest for life is one of his superpowers, and it’s key to his popularity, the sense that he knows what a lucky schmuck he is, can’t believe it any more than you can, and damn if he isn’t going to enjoy every second while it lasts. The impression he gives off lately is of unrepressed joy—squint-smiling through his new