To this day, the mother of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes can’t believe the words that fell out of her mouth when she met superstar Taylor Swift, who is dating her son’s teammate Travis Kelce.
Randi Mahomes also can’t believe her son didn’t tell her when he became co-owner of the Kansas City Royals, kind of a big deal.
And he most certainly didn’t warn his mom that he was going to talk publicly about his dirty lucky underwear.
Just days before the Super Bowl, Mama Mahomes, who avoids media interviews, sat down at her home outside Tyler, Texas, for a wide-ranging interview with Jennifer Vickery Smith, the host of the “Got It From My Momma” podcast.
Mahomes — mother to Patrick, 28; Jackson, 23, and Mia, 12 — said life as the mother of perhaps the NFL’s biggest star is both blessing and curse.
Here’s a sampling of what she shared.
‘FAKE ALLEGATIONS’ AGAINST JACKSON
Her middle child, Jackson, who has more than 1 million followers on TikTok and became a familiar presence on the sidelines before Chiefs games, spent much of 2023 in legal trouble.
“We put this past year behind us with some fake, where there was some fake allegations against him that finally came out which was a lot besides my mom passing, … all of this at the same time,” Mahomes said, referring to the death of her mother last April.
“We were blessed that it all got dropped because of the situation was for no reason.”
Last year, Jackson was accused of sexual battery by the owner of an Overland Park restaurant. In January, the Johnson County District Attorney’s Office dropped three felony counts because the woman he allegedly forcibly kissed three times eventually refused to testify. She had said she faced a firestorm of criticism and had to close her restaurant.
He is, however, scheduled to face trial March 25 on a single misdemeanor charge of battery pertaining to an allegation that he pushed a 19-year-old waiter at the restaurant. He has pleaded not guilty.
“That had to be a tough valley to walk through as a mom,” Smith told Mahomes.
“It was,” she said.
“Especially if you know or feel that someone that you love has been falsely accused of something as well.”
“Yes.”
“And then how did you keep him encouraged? How did you stay encouraged through that?”
“Um, lots of prayer. Lots of Bible study with my Bible study group. Just prayers from every direction because you find out who your friends are, you find out really who people are when you go through those trials.
“And even for my children, all of them, it brought us all closer together.
“As a mother, as I watched a TV station that loves one child and then absolutely hates the other, it not only affects me it affects both of my children and it affects my daughter. We’ve gotten to where we turn off the TV.”
Smith marveled at Jackson’s huge TikTok following. “Is that what he does, content creator?” she asked.
“No, it’s not,” said Mahomes. “He works at a credit union.”
“He has a 9-to-5,” Smith said, sounding surprised.
“He has a 9 to 5. February 1 marked one year,” Mahomes said. ”I do like to brag he is my only graduate from college. He has one up on Patrick. Like watch out. I’ve always said Patrick was my athlete and Jackson could be, he’s going to go to the top of whatever” he does.
She said as a parent, “I would rather what happened with my middle child happen to me instead of the one that would give you the shoes off his feet … the one who is my rock.
“Patrick, he’s a father and husband and a football player and people look up to him in every aspect. If you saw into my family, Jackson’s our rock, even for Patrick. He’s the one that God put him in our lives to keep us together.”
MEETING TAYLOR SWIFT
She thought being an NFL mom was oh so challenging. Then she met Swift “and now I’m like whoa, whoa, I can only imagine her parents.
“But I will say she’s the most gracious, sweet girl, very personable. I was shocked she was so tall.”
“Wow, you’re so tall,” Mahomes told Swift when they met. “I probably sounded crazy.”
Swift, who is said to be 5 feet, 11 inches tall, is learning suite etiquette, Mahomes said. Fans rarely notice Mahomes in the suite at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. She’s usually on the floor playing with Patrick and Brittany’s two young children or pacing because she’s nervous, she said.
Swift is “fun, having a good time, and I love to see that,” she said. “But at the same time I’m like, hey we’re superstitious in here. I need you to go sit back down. We’ve joked and stuff.”
She marveled at how Swift will stop to take a picture “with everybody,” even going to and from the bathroom. “She’s going to stop for all the little girls, all the little kids. You go girl,” she said.
Swift won Mahomes over by being kind to Mia, who “is very shy and very quiet and doesn’t want attention,” Mahomes said. “She’s really made sure she feels good. She makes me feel good.”
MAN OF THE HOUSE
Patrick was 9 when his parents — Randi and former major league pitcher Pat Mahomes — divorced, leaving her a single mom.
Her eldest “was always the man of the house,” she said. “When his little sister was born … he stepped up. Even to this day he still feels like he is their father or whatever.
“He was a very responsible kid, very grown up for his age. Maybe not cleaning up … but very mature, very independent.
“He went through all of that with me, whether it was moving him from a private school I could no longer afford to a public school.” He drove a clunker Honda Accord. “The one thing I do say I wish I hadn’t done is work as much as I did.”
Though he could have afforded to, he didn’t buy a new car for the first few years he was in the NFL, she said, “because he’s like his mom, he saw me struggle and save. And he said, ‘Why would I buy a car? They’re going to give me a car to drive.’
His first splurge, said Mom, was the Rolls-Royce he bought in 2020 after he won his first of three Super Bowls
“He went through all of that with me, whether it was moving him from a private school I could no longer afford to a public school.” He drove a clunker Honda Accord. “The one thing I do say I wish I hadn’t done is work as much as I did.”
Though he could have afforded to, he didn’t buy a new car for the first few years he was in the NFL, she said, “because he’s like his mom, he saw me struggle and save. And he said, ‘Why would I buy a car? They’re going to give me a car to drive.’
Mahomes wanted Patrick “of course to go to a big school because I knew he was capable of doing that. And he got letters, letters, letters and we visited schools and then Texas Tech.
“Being from Texas, east Texas, Texas Tech was so far out there I just never thought of it. And literally, he goes down there and visits and he comes back and he goes ‘that’s it.’”
And Mama said no. (She wanted him to go to college near a beach. Didn’t happen.)
She didn’t want him to decide until she saw the school herself. So she traveled more than 440 miles to the campus in Lubbock “and I knew his heart and soul was there.
“I literally told the coaches when they were trying to entertain us, the parents, they’re like what do you think, and I said I don’t think this school’s good enough. My son is good. He is so good … no offense.”
They asked her to name better teams in Texas, “so I named teams, a lot of teams, and they were like ‘ouch.’
“You know how God puts you in places that are unexpected? We laugh about it with the coaches now.”
One downfall of life as an NFL family is all the extra people always around after “all those years of being a single mom and just being me and my kids,” Mahomes said.
Now, when Christmas Day is a game day, as it was last year, and the family gets around to opening gifts “there might be other people there, filming. … I just want to be selfish and have them to myself … have my grandkids to myself. … I want it to be us without the other people, have just normal time.
“It’s been the hardest seven years of my life. I’m super blessed and I’m super happy … but it’s just the everything that comes with it. It is a lot. We’re all learning.”
