“There were definitely people she knew that knew who I was, in her corner [who said]: Yo! Did you know he was coming? I had somebody playing Cupid,” Kelce told the outlet, adding that he eventually found that out from Swift when she contacted him directly.

“She told me exactly what was going on and how I got lucky enough to get her to reach out,” he said.

Elsewhere during Kelce’s discussion with journalist J.R. Moehringer, the Kansas City Chiefs tight end opened up about his relationship with his brother Jason and his mother Donna’s feelings on Swift, and he explained that he’s “never dated anyone with that kind of aura about them” before the 12-time Grammy winner.

“I’ve never dealt with it,” Kelce added of Swift. “But at the same time, I’m not running away from any of it…. The scrutiny she gets, how much she has a magnifying glass on her, every single day, paparazzi outside her house, outside every restaurant she goes to, after every flight she gets off, and she’s just living, enjoying life. When she acts like that I better not be the one acting all strange.”

Kelce, who called Swift both “hilarious” and “a genius,” also revealed that he and the pop superstar share a similar outlook on family and work.

“Everybody knows I’m a family guy,” he said. “Her team is her family. Her family does a lot of stuff in terms of the tour, the marketing, being around, so I think she has a lot of those values as well, which is right up my alley.”

WSJ. Magazine’s December/January Issue will be out on newsstands on Dec. 9.