One month after Jason Kelce announced his retirement from the NFL, his wife, Kylie Kelce, thinks it’s time for him to get back to work.
“He needs to get out,” Kylie, 31, joked on the Monday, April 1, episode of Today. “It’s not that I need him to get out of the house, it’s, like, he needs to get out of the house. I think that with three small children, I don’t think golf is gonna cut it.” (The couple, who wed in 2018, share daughters Wyatt, 4, Elliotte, 3, and Bennett, 13 months.)
Jason, 36, announced that he would be hanging up his Philadelphia Eagles jersey during an emotional speech on March 4. “I don’t know what’s next, but I look forward to the new challenges and opportunities that await, and I know that I carry with me the lessons from my time here and that forever we shall all share the bond of being Philadelphians,” he said at the time.
According to Kylie, Jason’s retirement speech has been years in the making. “He has been writing his retirement speech for years. He has been telling me he was going to retire since we started dating, which was, like, almost nine years ago,” she told Today cohosts Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb. “I think he understood the impact of what football has been to his life, and I think he wanted to make sure that he accurately conveyed that to everyone else. … He really wanted to make sure it was correct, and I think it was an outstanding summary.”
Since stepping down from the team, many fans have been eager to see Jason return to football as a sports broadcaster. “I think nothing is off the table at this point,” Kylie teased on Monday. “I mean, he’s my husband so I’m biased, but I think he’s so good at everything he tries. It’s kind of a pain in the butt. But I think that nothing is off the table. I think he’s an ideas guy, so I think he’s just, sort of, letting them brew and see what happens.”
Kylie appeared on Today to help raise awareness for the Eagles Autism Foundation, which raises money for autism awareness and research and hosts events for children with autism. Just like his wife, Jason has worked to help Philadelphia youth through his nonprofit, the (Be)Philly Foundation, which works to support students’ academic journeys.
It’s Jason’s charity work that Kylie said she hopes their kids remember just as much as his football career. “But I hope that, ultimately, they end up understanding that their dad had an impact on Philadelphia in a way that was wholesome and that he understood the city, enough that he wanted to stay there and raise a family there and enough that he loves the people that he worked with and will continue to love them, and that he did things in the city for charities, and things like that,” she gushed. “He gave his blood, sweat and tears to the city, and it was out of sheer love and commitment, and I hope that my girls see that.”
During his March retirement speech, Jason tearfully recalled the night he and Kylie met, stating, “She was beautiful and smart, serious yet playful. I knew it right away.”
Kylie said she is “so glad” the early days of their relationship were not highly publicized, unlike Jason’s brother Travis Kelce’s relationship with Taylor Swift. Though she didn’t directly address the pair’s romance, Kylie told Today that their family are happy if Travis, 34, is happy. (Travis and Swift, 34, began dating not long after the athlete attended a July 2023 Eras Tour concert in Kansas City, Missouri.)
“We are always cheering on Uncle Trav,” Kylie shared. “It’s such a treat to be able to do that on and off the field. But it’s been amazing.”
