CELEBRITY
Emotional moment:”Jeff Jarrett Shares How Taylor Swift Supported His Daughters During His Wife’s Cancer Battle”
Professional wrestler Jeff Jarrett revealed that his family had a close connection to Taylor Swift, and explained how the “Cruel Summer” singer helped out amid his late wife Jill Gregory’s cancer battle.
While appearing on the July 5 episode of WREG, Jeff, 56, explained that Taylor, 34, is a “friend of the family” and said she was “very good to our family during a very, very dark period” before Jill died in May 2007 following her battle with breast cancer.
“Taylor was like a big sister,” he said, referencing her close relationship with his daughters Joslyn, Jaclyn and Jerlyn. “She came over, took the girls baking cookies and just hung out at the house. I can’t say enough good things about Taylor.” After joking that Taylor has “done pretty well for herself,” Jeff shared that she is “a sweetheart.”
“I still call her ‘our girl,’ and now she’s up hanging in the NFL circles,” he said, referencing her relationship with Kansas City Chiefs athlete Travis Kelce. Taylor and Travis, 34, began dating in the summer of 2023, and they have quickly become one of the most beloved couples in Hollywood.
The WWE then clarified that Taylor was “never on the Jeff Jarrett payroll” despite spending time with his daughters, noting that she was not “technically not a babysitter” for his family. Despite sharing Taylor’s close bond with his girls, Jeff did not explain how they first connected with Taylor. However, he does live in Henderson, Tennessee, where the Swift family moved when Taylor was 13 to pursue her music career. Taylor’s relationship with Jeff’s kids remained tight during the early days of her career, and Jaclyn even appeared in her music video for her song “Mine” in 2010. The track was the lead single for her third studio album Speak Now, which debuted in October 2010.
More than a decade after the music video was released, Jeff recalled the experience of filming the project during a 2021 interview with Instinct Culture. “The ‘Mine’ video is so creative, and my daughter Jaclyn looked like a little Taylor,” he said, adding that the “Anti-Hero” singer asked his permission to cast Jaclyn in the video. “Taylor, being as bold as she always is, just said, ‘I want Jaclyn in the video.'”
After Jeff agreed to let Jaclyn star in the music video, the family traveled to Maine to film. “You had to turn over your cell phone on set and all that stuff,” he recalled. “It was a good experience for the kids.” While Jeff is clearly impressed with Taylor’s musical abilities, he also applauded her sense as a businesswoman. “Not only is she uber-creative as an artist, but she also thinks like a businesswoman,” he said at the time. “Those two skill sets combined, you rarely see. She deserves all the success she has.”
Not only did Jeff and his kids get to spend quality time with the “Mean” singer, but he said that she brought her then-boyfriend, Joe Jonas, over to his family’s house a few times.