After a fairy tale football season that saw Taylor Swift at the forefront with boyfriend Travis Kelce, Mick Foley wanted to share a personal story about the 14-time Grammy winner.
The former professional wrestler owned that he is indeed a Swiftie not only because of her songwriting ability and performance skills, but also because of her relationship with longtime wrestler friend Jeff Jarrett.
With Jarrett’s approval, Foley detailed that in 2007 his fellow WWE Hall of Fame member lost his wife and high school sweetheart, Jill, to cancer.
One day during the difficult time Jarrett and his two daughters were enduring, Foley overheard Jarrett telling someone that “Taylor took the girls out for the day.”
“I was literally stunned to find out that the Taylor he had mentioned was Taylor Swift, who in 2007 was already well on her way to being a global superstar, with eponymous 2006 album, ‘Taylor Swift’ several months into an astonishing 157 weeks on the #Billboard200 charts,” Foley wrote on Facebook.
Foley was made aware that the pop star was a neighbor of Jarrett’s in Hendersonville, Tenn., and it was not solely a “random act of kindness.”
Swift had become a big figure in the daughters’ lives as they grew up with and without their mother.
She is said to have baked cookies with the girls, sang in the living room, babysat for Jarrett while he cared for his wife and spent quality time with the family.
“Her spending quality time, baking cookies, talking, just being there, is what’s special,” Jarrett said in a text to Foley. “In the middle of her career exploding would have been ‘a reason’ that she was too busy. That young lady is special.”
Jarrett added that one of his daughters, Jaclyn, portrayed Swift in her 2010 music video “Mine.”
“I got tears in my eyes when I read that message from Jeff – and I’m grateful that he has allowed me to share it with all of you,” Foley concluded. “Maybe this story might even make some of the haters out there to consider directing their hate in some other direction – or maybe rid themselves of that hatred altogether.
“I do not own a Taylor Swift CD, I have never seen her perform live, and honestly – even given how ubiquitous her music is in our lives – might not be able to give you the name of 10 Taylor Swift songs of my life depended on it. But I love Taylor Swift – and in my own way, am a Swiftie for life.”
Following the Chiefs’ third Super Bowl victory in the last five seasons, Swift flew off to Australia to resume her Eras Tour.