Kylie Kelce, wife of Jason Kelce, sister-in-law of Travis Kelce, mother of three (with a fourth on the way), and Dunkin Donuts enthusiast, can add another descriptor to that incomplete list: No. 1 podcast host.
The debut of Kylie’s new podcast, Not Gonna Lie, has unseated Joe Rogan’s The Joe Rogan Experience from its long-held perch atop the most-listened charts on both Apple and Spotify. The inaugural episode, featuring It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia star Kaitlin Olson as a guest, was published on December 5, with new episodes planned to drop each Thursday.
Though Kylie shares a last name with two other successful podcasters—the Kelce brothers co-host the popular New Heights—she was upfront about the fact that her show would be different, saying that husband Jason “dragged me into this mess,” meaning, generally, the public’s attention, thanks to his quiet life as a retired Philadelphia Eagles player who not only co-hosts New Heights, but comments regularly on ESPN, and partakes in low-key hobbies like being very shirtless and outgoing near Taylor Swift at brother Travis’s games with the Kansas City Chiefs.
“I don’t love to have attention on me,” Kylie said during the episode. “I think it has something to do with the fact that I’ve always been very tall, and so I’ve always been trying to distract from [that and say], ‘You don’t need to stare at me.’”
“I tried to stay quiet and sort of do the Homer Simpson roll back into the hedge, and no one was allowing it,” she said.
Now, however, she’s learned to “embrace it” and take the opportunity to control her own narrative and highlight topics that are important to her, like women’s sports and parenting, her passion for her coffee order, and charities she supports—and, importantly, she’s aiming to do it all in under 45 minutes per episode. “Unlike my husband and brother-in-law, I don’t have all the time in the world,” she said, ribbing the pair for their often supersized episodes and admitting that she listens to theirs in segments.
She also addressed the unspoken “how does one woman raise three daughters, grow another one, make sure Jason packs Jason’s jeans, coach a field hockey team, and host a podcast powerful enough to rattle Rogan loose” question. With help, of course.
Asked whether Jason is watching the couple’s children while she records (Kylie and the kids have made several unplanned cameos on New Heights via yelping in the background), she said, “How do I say this nicely? No.”
“When I have to do something…I will schedule childcare,” she said. “My husband could tell me 72 times that he is going to be in the house during the times I have to leave it, and I will still schedule childcare. It is not a knock on my husband. My husband is busier than he has ever been. I see him less now in retirement than I did when he was playing football. We had a set schedule then. Now it is an absolute free-for-all. He is working so hard and really grinding right now, and so I just make sure that I’m covered. And if that means that he’s at the house and someone else is there just to cover or make up the difference, then that’s what we have going on.”
“He’s not watching them right now, I think he’s in meetings.”
