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Taylor Swift has risen to wild levels of fame, especially with her incredibly successful Eras Tour. While the pop star certainly deserves most of the credit, her parents have undeniably been the wind beneath her wings throughout her career. Scott and Andrea Swift recognized their daughter’s talent early and supported her in all her pursuits.
“She was always singing music when she was 3, 5, 6, 7, years old,” Scott told University of Delaware’s paper UDaily. “It’s Taylor doing what she likes to do.”
Not every dad would notice their kid likes to sing and go the extra mile to help them follow their dreams, but Scott did. And Andrea was right beside them both. Here’s everything to know about the couple behind the star.
Who are Scott and Andrea Swift?
Aside from being parents to one of the world’s biggest stars? Andrea worked as a marketing manager at an advertising agency, while Scott was a stockbroker who eventually served as vice president for Merrill Lynch. They were married on Feb. 20, 1988, in Texas. Taylor was born on Dec. 13, 1989, and her younger brother, Austin, arrived on March 11, 1992.
As business-minded people, they likely weren’t expecting such a creative kid. Her mom, at least, was thinking of a future where her daughter worked in business and named her to help protect her from gender discrimination. Taylor told Rolling Stone in 2009, “My mom thought it was cool that if you got a business card that said ‘Taylor,’ you wouldn’t know if it was a guy or a girl…She wanted me to be a business person in a business world.”
They are also both cancer survivors.
In a Tumblr post in 2015, Taylor shared that Andrea had been diagnosed with the disease. She kept the specifics private but added, “She wanted you to know. She wanted you to know why she may not be at as many shows this tour. She’s got an important battle to fight.”
In an essay for ELLE in 2019, Taylor said Andrea’s cancer had returned and revealed that Scott had also undergone treatment for cancer. The family have kept further medical details understandably private.
How did Scott and Andrea encourage Taylor Swift when she was a kid?
Swift has talked a lot about how she grew up on a Christmas tree farm in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, which is not a place with a million opportunities to sing. They made sure to shuttle her to local gigs and karaoke nights to start.
They eventually moved to Hendersonville, the suburbs of Nashville, for more opportunities. To get some attention, the family started passing out tapes of Taylor singing karaoke.
“My mom waited in the car with my little brother while I knocked on doors up and down Music Row,” Taylor told Entertainment Weekly in 2008. “I would say, ‘Hi, I’m Taylor. I’m 11. I wanted a record deal—call me.’”
She did land a record deal with Sony when she was only 14. Despite Taylor’s youth, Andrea told Entertainment Weekly that she never pressured her daughter into anything.
“There would always be an escape hatch into normal life if she decided this wasn’t something she had to pursue,” Andrea said in the 2008 interview. “And of course that’s like saying to her, ‘If you want to stop breathing, that’s cool.’”
They also tried not to frame the move to Nashville as being exclusively for Taylor.
“I never wanted to make that move about her ‘making it,’” Andrea told EW. “Because what a horrible thing if it hadn’t happened, for her to carry that kind of guilt or pressure around…And we moved far enough outside Nashville to where she didn’t have to be going to school with producers’ kids and label presidents’ kids and be reminded constantly that she was struggling to make it…We’ve always told her that this is not about putting food on our table or making our dreams come true.”
But after Taylor made her debut at the Grand Ole Opry in September 2006, Andrea was the one who went on the tour with her daughter. When Taylor won her first Grammy Awards for her album Fearless, Taylor dedicated the award to her parents.
“This is for all those times that you said I could do whatever I wanted in life,” she said. “And my mom, you’re my best friend.”
How are Andrea and Scott involved in Taylor Swift’s life now?
Shortly after her first cancer diagnosis, Andrea accompanied Taylor onstage at the ACM Awards. Swift was being honored with the Milestone Award.
“I’ve watched this milestone artist from the time she was a tangled-hair little girl…Full of imagination and creativity until right now, when she prepares for her next world tour. I’m a very proud mom,” Andrea said
Scott is also incredibly proud of his daughter, but in her Netflix documentary Taylor Swift: Miss Americana, Taylor revealed he carries a lot of worry. The conversation came up after she publicly supported two Democratic candidates in her home state of Tennessee in 2018, after many years of staying quiet about politics of any kind.
“This was a situation where, from a humanity perspective, and from what my moral compass was telling me I needed to do, I knew was right, and I really didn’t care about repercussions,” Taylor said of the decision. “My dad is terrified of threats against my safety and my life, and he has to see how many stalkers we deal with on a daily basis, and know that this is his kid. It’s where he comes from.”
They’ve both been supporting Taylor through her massive Eras Tour.
Scott was at the kickoff in March 2023, wearing a “D.O.H. Pass” meaning, “Dad of Headliner.”
In April 2023, Taylor shouted the couple out in Houston. In a video posted on TikTok, she says, “I love you, Houston. You treat us like Houston is my mom’s hometown, which it is. You treat us like this is where my parents got married, which it is.”
In Philadelphia in Mother’s Day, in a video on Twitter, Taylor sang “The Best Day,” a song she wrote for her mom in 2008.
“I wrote this song just compiling these sort of core childhood memories I had of not just her as a mother, but her as a friend,” she explained, adding her mom responded to the tune by saying, “‘It’s such a beautiful song. Where did you find it? It sounds exactly like the things we went through.’”
Taylor continued, “I was like, ‘Mom, I wrote it and recorded it secretly; it is our memories.’ It was the sweetest thing ever because I just think she couldn’t have comprehended that I would write a song about the two of us.”
Both of them were at the Los Angeles premiere of her Eras Tour film in October of 2023.
They both like Taylor’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce.
Travis Kelce and Scott were both in Argentina for Taylor’s show in Buenos Aires, standing in the VIP section. Scott has also been spotted in the VIP box at football games alongside his daughter when the Kansas City Chiefs are playing. In December, he and Andrea met Kelce’s dad, Ed Kelce, at a game.
And Scott and Andrea were both present when the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl this year. In a TikTok from Taylor, her parents could be seen partying at Zouk nightclub at Resorts World in Las Vegas following the win.