She is the first mother to have two sons playing against each other in a Super Bowl â Jason Kelce, who hikes the ball to Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, versus Travis Kelce, who catches passes from Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
âItâs gonna be really tough but Iâm just gonna cheer my head off when the offense is on the field,â Donna Kelce told The Post. âSo Iâm gonna be screaming the entire game. Iâm gonna root for both of âem to score. A lot.â
She has witnessed each of them winning a Super Bowl, but at the end of the night, it will be a bittersweet feeling for her knowing that only one of them will have a second ring.
âSomebodyâs gonna go home a loser for sure, and one of âemâs gonna be heartbroken because they didnât beat their brother,â Donna said. âThatâs what itâs gonna come down to, itâs gonna come down to bragging rights.â
It was a bragging-rights childhood in the Kelceâs home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
âIt was always a competition,â Donna said. âWho gets to the table first. Whoâs got the last chicken wing. Whoâs gonna get in the front seat of the car. Whoâs gonna take the elevator and get down to the bottom floor first. It just always was competition. And they donât like to lose. They want to win, and thatâs just the way they are.â
Jason, 35, is two years older than Travis.
âYou hate each other when youâre growing up, but later on in life, youâre best buds, because youâve gone through everything together, so itâs kinda fun,â Donna said.
Kelce versus Kelce would steel them both.
âThey competed with the best that they had in the city. ⦠It was living right next to them, you know?â she said. âIn the next room. Whether it was â mini-hockey in the basement, whatever, it was always competition.â
Football wasnât their first love, but of course they rooted for the Browns.
âItâs just surreal,â Donna said. âItâs just like youâre in a dream, and you donât really know if itâs happening. Weâve thought about it for the past 10 years that Travis has been in the league that he may someday play them, but they usually only play every four years, so the only time they would ever meet would be in the Super Bowl, but during the season some years. I know theyâve been talking about it since they were 10.
âBut the scenario was always that they were playing on the same team, and they were with, you know, the Brownies. So they both had Bernie Kosar jerseys and pants and everything and helmets.â
Before their NFL dream, the boys dreamed a different dream.
âThey both had the hockey dream,â she said. âThat was what they wanted to play. They were on skates for most of their life from the age of 3 and up. They loved football, they loved to watch it, but they couldnât play it âtil middle school.
âI remember Travis coming to me one year and say: âI want to go to Canada, and I want to go on the junior leagues.â And Iâm like, âThereâs no way Iâm letting somebody else raise my kid. He was good enough, he coulda played anywhere, he was really, really good. But itâs like youâre away from your family most of the year. It just wasnât an option.â
Football wasnât initially an option because mom wouldnât let it be an option.
âI wouldnât let them do that,â she said. âNobody ever says, âI was the best peewee football player ever.â And itâs not very well organized. So thereâs always suspect to parents and injuries and things like that. Theyâre not really trained coaches, so I made them wait until they were in middle school to play football. They played seventh and eighth grade.â
They didnât play football together until they were at the University of Cincinnati in 2009. They didnât play together in high school when Jason was a senior and Travis, then a quarterback, was a sophomore because Travis missed the season.
âBecause he flunked French. And I wouldnât take him to summer school,â Donna said, âI said, âNo buddy, you screwed up, you gotta pay for this.â So he didnât play with him.â
The boys played lacrosse in middle school, and Jason played it in high school.
âTravis was very good as a pitcher, so he did that,â she said. âJason played hockey all through high school and Travis switched from hockey to basketball when he became a freshman in high school.â
It was hockey at age 10 or 11 that would lead Jason to his schoolboy passion as a linebacker and eventually as the Eagles center.
âI remember the first time that Jason played hockey,â Donna said, âwhen youâre a squirt and you can actually start checking people, he just skated up to me with this beaming look on his face, said: âMom. I finally found what Iâm really, really good at!â â
Referring to Jason, she said: âHe has many layers. Heâs a very passionate person, and he doesnât do well on a team with people that donât try hard. So he really found his own when he got to the pros where everybody is busting their behind to be the best that they can be. He doesnât like slackers, he just doesnât. He never could deal with that very well. Because he was trying so hard and he was so emotional about playing and winning, Jason spent a lot of time in the penalty box when he was playing hockey. Also for lacrosse too. He always was the highest-penalized person.â
Referring to Travis, she said: âHe just loves life. He loves everything about being out, being around people, doing things. Heâs very driven, very similar to Jason, but more so than anything, the friends and the family that he has and the friends that heâs made that heâs kept over the years, heâs just a diehard good friend. He has helped people in many ways over the years, whether their bike was stolen, or anything like that, heâs like a community guy.â
Similar, but different.
âYou know theyâre very very similar, both high-energy, both funny,â she said. âJason is more pensive, and heâs very calculating. And Travis is more in the moment. So thatâs kind of the way theyâre different, basically. Both love to be out and enjoy people ⦠not a whole heckuva lot of difference.â
Donna, her brother and her ex-husband Ed were at Lincoln Financial Field for the NFC Championship game and then met up at Chickie and Peteâs â Ed left in the fourth quarter and walked 20 minutes to the bar while Donna and her brother took a police escort â to watch the Chiefs beat the Bengals.
âI have a jersey where each shoulder is different,â she said. âOneâs an Eagles and the other oneâs a Chiefs. And I have an Eagles jersey on the back, and I have a Chiefs jersey on the front with their numbers. Thereâs a 62 on the back and an 87 on the front. Travis had that one custom-made.â
She will arrive in Arizona on Monday and expects to wear it for the Kelce Bowl.
âPeople for some reason want to talk to the mom,â she said. âI donât know why. Theyâre the ones that put in all the hard work and did everything. I just drove âem places. âWant to play lacrosse? OK, letâs go.â â
She feels blessed to be the mother of two NFL players and two good people. The spotlight awaits her.
âIâm fine with it,â Donna said. âIâm just me. People either accept me for who I am ⦠Not the most beautiful human being, Iâm very average, but Iâm a good mom, and I think everybody can relate to it.â
Americaâs First Mother on Super Bowl Sunday. One history-making mom.