THE NFL'S OTHER BIG BUCKS DUO
How Taylor Swift helped raise the profile of Patrick Mahomes’ wife, Brittany
THE power of Taylor Swift’s influence has had a positive affect on America’s other sweethearts. Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, 28, and his wife Brittany, 28, were already football famous — he was Super Bowl MVP last year, after all — but their friendship with Swift and Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, 34, has rocketed them to a different pop-culture stratosphere.
Now, with Patrick leading the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII against the San Francisco 49ers Sunday, the Mahomeses are building their own mini empire. And, experts say, they have the potential to command millions as an influencer couple.
On Thursday, Sports Illustrated
Swim announced Brittany as a 2024 rookie model.
“I never in my wildest dreams thought this would happen,” Brittany said in a video, making a perfect nod to Swift’s song “Wildest Dreams.”
Indeed, it’s safe to guess that becoming friends with the superstar singer is also a dream come true.
“Taylor is a huge celebrity and Brittany has now become that as well,” Shellie Eldredge, chair of the Chamber of Commerce in Whitehouse, Texas, where Brittany and Patrick grew up, told The Post.
“That’s partly why [Brittany] has become even more successful. People look at her as more legit.”
Rising Swift-ly
When Swift, 34, entered Chiefs Kingdom last fall, Hollywood followed — and scooped up Brittany. In September, the news pals dined at Emilio’s Ballato in Nolita with Sophie Turner and Blake Lively.
Brittany was also on hand the next day as Swift assembled her celeb squad — including Lively, Turner, Ryan Reynolds, Hugh Jackman and Sabrina Carpenter — at a Chiefs game against the New York Jets.
Throughout the season, Swift and Mahomes posed in custom jackets emblazoned with their other halves’ team numbers and were spotted playing out their own secret handshake as they cheered on the Chiefs.
“It’s hard at this point to meet people that are true and real and they kind of found each other,” Patrick’s mom, Randi Mahomes, told Page Six this week. “They really, I mean, talk all the time and they’re like, really good friends.”
After Brittany was spotted with Swift, her Instagram following surged by more than 25% — up from 1.4 million followers in August to nearly 2 million, trend expert Rachel Richardson noted.
“Brittany was already a social media star before she started hanging with Taylor, but the attention that their friendship has brought has supercharged her profile,” Richardson, who writes the trend newsletter Highly Flammable, told The Post.
But there is more value to Brittany than just her new identity as Taylor’s pal.
“Her marriage to Mahomes is also extremely valuable to marketers . . . they’d make millions for just one partnership,” Richardson said.
Last November, the couple and their kids — daughter Sterling, 2, and 14-month-old Patrick Jr., aka Bronze—appeared in a holiday promo for Kim Kardashian’s Skims fashion line.
“She’s perfect for brands that want to appeal to moms and homemakers because she’s very open about her family life on Insta posting lots of pictures of her two children and her husband Patrick," Richardson said.
School sweethearts
Brittany, a certified fitness trainer, tends to post relatable content on her social media — talking about everything from a Red Lobster menu to her son’s sleep schedule — which makes her a win for marketers.
Her recent partnership with plant protein shake OWYN, Richardson estimates, likely commanded “in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars” for an Instagram grid post.
More fashion deals will likely follow, Richardson added: “If a style brand wants Taylor-level exposure but can’t get it then Brittany is the next best vehicle.”
Patrick and Brittany met while attending Whitehouse HS in Texas, and began dating in 2011. She was a cheerleader and played soccer; Patrick — the son of Patrick Mahomes Sr., who played for MLB teams including the Mets, the Twins and the Red Sox from 1992 to 2003 — was a baseball pitcher.
“We kinda met in seventh, eighth grade,” Mahomes said in the Netflix docuseries “Quarterback,” reminiscing on their early relationship. “She was the grade above me, I was kind of the best friend, in the friend zone forever.
“I used to walk her to class and was trying to flirt. When I was a sophomore in high school, she was a junior. I actually got her a rose . . . I kinda . . . I had a crush on her.”
Brittany graduated high school
in 2013 and played soccer at University of Texas at Tyler. A year later, Patrick enrolled at Texas Tech University to play football and baseball.
“He ended up going to Texas Tech, and that’s when it really hit me, ‘Oh s--t, he might go play professional football,’ ” Brittany told “Today” in 2020. “It was surreal to see him living his dream and seeing him grow as an athlete and as a man in general was just amazing.”
Patrick and Brittany got engaged at Arrowhead Stadium in September 2020 when the quarterback popped the question following the Chiefs’ championship ring ceremony.
The couple shared a taste of their reality on “Quarterbacks,” which premiered last July, following Patrick’s Super Bowl LVII run last year leading the Chiefs to a 38-35 win over the Eagles — Kansas City’s second champion ship in four years.
“They were kind of tossed into a world of fame. It hasn’t really changed them that much,” James Wansley, mayor of Whitehouse, told The Post. “They’ve got really strong friend groups that they’re still in contact with from Whitehouse. They have really strong foundations in their family.”
‘Keep them grounded’
“You have an agent, a stylist, you have a PR person — you have all that stuff and they’re in your ear about how you should be perceived, how you should behave and how you act eventually becomes who you are,” Wansley said of celebrities.
“But [Brittany and Patrick have] this core set of friends that keep them grounded and are able to speak truth to them without being kicked out of the group.”
Brittany’s growing fame has been met with criticism at times. Fans called her “disrespectful” and “trashy” for spraying a bottle of Champagne over the crowd from her suite at Arrowhead Stadium while celebrating a Chiefs win against the Buffalo Bills in January 2022.
And last week, Brittany shot down haters who called her rude for a video that showed interaction with an M&T Bank Stadium employee in Baltimore. In the clip, she is seen asking, “Where do we go from here?” as she spins her finger in a circle.
“Stay bothered,” Brittany posted to Instagram Story in response.
Fans from Mahomes’ hometown, meanwhile, say they are thrilled that the mom of two is holding her own in the public eye — and not letting her husband’s fame eclipse her.
“They were already a power couple [before Swift]. Brittany could just be Patrick’s wife, which is fantastic, but she has continued to make her brand known,” Ashley Westerfield, an administrative assistant at Whitehouse Area Chamber of Commerce, told The Post.
“She’s like, ‘I’m also going to be here — I’m going to give my kids someone who they can be proud to look up to. Make her own name; do her business; work hard.’ We love that.”