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Travis Kelce: Chiefs camp offers welcomed ‘sanctuary’ after closely watched wedding to Taylor Swift

PEOPLE
Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce (87), and wide receiver Rashee Rice (4) walk to NFL football training camp Friday, July 31, in St. Joseph, Mo. Associated Press

ST. JOSEPH, Mo. — Travis Kelce likes to call training camp with the Kansas City Chiefs his “sanctuary,” whether that be the quiet, hourlong drive north to Missouri Western State University or the solitude that he finds while living in college dorms for a month.

Such refuge was probably never more welcome than on the heels of this past summer.

It was just over a month ago that Kelce exchanged vows with Taylor Swift in a star-studded wedding that tied together one of the best tight ends in NFL history with the biggest pop star on the planet. At the intimate gathering in cavernous Madison Square Garden, Adam Sandler served as the surprise officiant, Stevie Nicks performed to a crowd of sports and entertainment icons, and fans lined the New York City sidewalks outside the historic venue hoping to catch a glimpse of it all.

“The wedding was the best night of my life,” Kelce said Wednesday, speaking for the first time at camp. “I appreciate everybody who came out and celebrated and had fun with us. That's about all I got for that night. It was a crazy night.”

The guest list included actors Bradley Cooper, Zoë Kravitz, Hugh Grant and Ethan Hawke; models Gigi Hadid and Karlie Kloss; comic Chris Rock; film director Steven Spielberg; and plenty of NFL players, including retired quarterback Tom Brady and several of Kelce's teammates with the Chiefs, like his best friend and quarterback, Patrick Mahomes.

The Swift-Kelce relationship began with his failed attempt at giving her a friendship ring at a concert. Kelce invited Swift to watch him play at Arrowhead Stadium, she took him up on the offer, and the rest of their courtship has been a celebrity fairytale.

Right down to the nuptials at Madison Square Garden, which has always captured Kelce's imagination, and where Swift has played to plenty of sold-out shows; she also turned up there to watch the Knicks play the Spurs in the NBA Finals in June.

“I always told myself I'd go for a playoff game when the Knicks were rocking, and my wife went when I was stuck in minicamp,” Kelce said with a wry smile. “It was kind of cool to live out my childhood dream to be in that venue. I can't thank the owners of MSG enough for allowing us the opportunity to do that, knowing we wanted a private event.”

Besides the wedding, Kelce has been busy pursuing several business opportunities since the end of last season, including his decision to buy a small share of David Blitzer's stake in his hometown Cleveland Guardians.

That puts him into rivalry territory with Mahomes, who owns his own small stake in the Kansas City Royals.

Yet on the field, the quarterback and tight end continue in lockstep, and never has it been more important for them to lift each other up. Mahomes is coming off a season-ending knee injury that required surgery in December, and Kelce is trying to prove that at age 36 — he turns 37 in October — he can still get it done in a young man's game.

“I still got a lot of love for this game. I still think I can go out and play at a high level,” Kelce said. “I want to go out there and prove to myself that I can play at a better level than last year. I think that's the biggest thing for me.”

There are few things that Kelce has not accomplished over 13 seasons on an NFL field. He's won three Super Bowl rings, was voted first-team All-Pro four times, and he has been invited to the Pro Bowl each of the last 11 seasons.

He contemplated retirement prior to last year, but the fact that Kansas City had just been blown out by Philadelphia did not sit well with him. So, Kelce came back for another go-around, catching 76 passes for 851 yards and five touchdowns while playing in every game — numbers that would represent a career year for most tight ends.

The Chiefs scuffled to a 6-11 finish, though. And if Kelce wasn't going out on a Super Bowl loss, he certainly wasn't quitting after a season like that.

“The fact that we didn't make the playoffs,” he said, “I moved on pretty quick.”

He moved onto wedding planning, to be sure. But also into preparing for the upcoming season, which most believe will be his last, one way or another. Kelce was ever-present throughout the offseason, whether it was voluntary workouts or mandatory minicamp, and he has been a constant source of energy during the hot, humid practices that are the hallmark of training camp.

“This is always going to be my sanctuary. I think St. Joe has a special place in my heart,” Kelce said. “You need to have these days. You need to have this time of grinding with the guys, being around them all day, starting to create that chemistry and standard for how we are going to do things. This year it's ramped up even more.

“I think that's a big thing,” Kelce added, “just enjoy these moments with these guys I've built this culture with.”

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Jon Hamm attends the world premiere of movie “F1" on June 16, 2025, in Times Square in New York. Invision via AP

SAN JOSE, Calif. — It’s easy to see how Jon Hamm is following a similar path as Don Draper, the handsome but elusive 1960s advertising executive he played on “Man Men.” After splitting from his longtime female partner, who’s more or less his contemporary, Hamm, like Draper, has taken up with a much younger woman.

In Hamm’s case, he’s also now starting a family with his new partner, actor Anna Osceola, making him a first-time father at 55.

While Draper got kicked out of the house by Betty, the mother of his three children, and married his pretty young secretary, Hamm ended an 18-year relationship with actor, screenwriter and occasional collaborator Jennifer Westfeldt in 2015. Westfeldt is a year older than Hamm, while Osceola is 17 years his junior. She also had a small role in “Mad Men.” Hamm and Osceola married in 2023 — in a cliffside ceremony in Big Sur overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Before it was reported this week that the “Your Friends & Neighbors” star and Osceola were expecting a baby, he told The Hollywood Reporter that he was looking forward to finally having children, as People reported. “It’s not lost on me that I’m (in my 50s),” he admitted. “I will be the old dad, but so it goes. It could be a good thing. We’ll see.”

Of course, Hamm isn’t the first male celebrity to be an “old dad.” It’s a longstanding Hollywood tradition — a cliche even. There’s a long list of famous male celebrities who have welcomed babies with much-younger wives and girlfriends when they are in their 50s, 60s, 70s and even their 80s: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Bruce Willis, Mick Jagger, Alec Baldwin, Mel Gibson, Eddie Murphy and Richard Gere.

Hamm also belongs in a subset of this cliche: Male celebrities who become first-time fathers when they are 50 or older.

George Clooney, once one of Hollywood’s most famous bachelors, became a first-time father at age 56 in 2017 when his wife Amal Clooney, then 39, gave birth to twins. After Justin Theroux split from 57-year-old Jennifer Aniston in 2018, the now-55-year-old actor married 32-year-old actor Nicole Brydon Bloom last year. Theroux became a first-time father to a son in April, with the couple announcing on Instagram: “He’s here. We are so in love.”

Then there is Steve Martin, now 80, who became a first-time father in 2012 at age 67 with his writer wife, Anne Stringfield. Hugh Grant also became a first-time father in 2012 when he was 51, and has since gone on to have five children with two different women.

Perhaps the most famous case of a male celebrity who got started late in fatherhood, after making a name for himself as a bachelor who enjoyed the company of a variety of women, is Warren Beatty. Now 89, Beatty dated Natalie Wood, Joan Collins, Leslie Caron, Carly Simon, Julie Christie, Diane Keaton and Madonna, to name just a few. In 1992, at age 55, the star of “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Shampoo” and “Reds” married actor Annette Bening, then 34. Together, they quickly had four children.

As for Hamm, he opened up in a 2022 interview with Howard Stern about finally being ready to settle down, marry and have children after he met Osceola, as People reported.

“This is another place in my life that I feel very settled and comfortable,” Hamm said on Stern’s SiriusXM show. “I’m in a relationship right now and it’s comfortable.” He also said the relationship is “more meaningful and (has) opened up the possibility of things like being married, having kids, defining a new version of happiness, life, wellness.”

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Comedian and actor Tiffany Haddish appears via Zoom during her DUI trial Tuesday, Aug. 11, in Fayetteville, Ga. Associated Press

FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. — Actor and comedian Tiffany Haddish avoided additional jail time Tuesday when she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor alcohol-related driving charge that stemmed from her 2022 arrest in Georgia after someone called 911 about a driver asleep at the wheel at a traffic light.

Other charges were dropped. After entering the plea by video, Haddish was placed on 12 months' probation and told to avoid drugs and alcohol and complete a substance abuse evaluation. She was credited for the brief time she spent in jail following her arrest.

Haddish’s films include the comedy “Girls Trip,” “Night School,” “Like a Boss” and “The Kitchen.” She wrote the New York Times bestseller “The Last Black Unicorn,” which earned a Grammy nomination for a subsequent audiobook she narrated. In 2018, she won an Emmy for her appearance on “Saturday Night Live” and a Grammy in 2021 for her special “Black Mitzvah.”

At around 2:30 a.m. on Jan. 14, 2022, someone called 911 to report seeing a person who appeared to be asleep in the driver's seat of a white Ford Explorer with their foot on the brake in Peachtree City, about 30 miles south of Atlanta, according to a court filing. An officer spotted an SUV that matched the description given by the caller and stopped Haddish as she pulled into a neighborhood, according to a police report.

Haddish's lawyers in May asked a judge to dismiss the case, arguing that waiting more than four years for the case to be resolved had caused personal and professional difficulties and violated her right to a speedy trial. Fayette County State Court Judge Jason Thompson rejected her arguments.

The judge found that Haddish and her attorneys had requested some of the delays, including a request for a delay so she could attend a fashion show in Morocco and a request to leave a hearing early to catch a flight. He wrote that she also did not show any evidence of having missed specific performing opportunities or of actual financial harm because of the delay.

Haddish also was arrested in November 2023 in Beverly Hills, California, on suspicion of driving under the influence after police received a call and said Haddish appeared to be slumped over the wheel of a vehicle while the engine was still running.

Haddish reached a plea deal with prosecutors in that case in February 2024, pleading no contest to a vehicle code violation, and the two misdemeanor DUI charges against her were dropped, according to the Los Angeles Times.

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From combined wire services

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