She’s the first mom to have two sons playing each other in a Super Bowl — Jason Kelce, who wanders the ball to Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, versus Travis Kelce, who catches passes from Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
“It’s going to be really tough, but I’m just going to cheer myself up when the offense is on the field,” Donna Kelce told The Post. “So I’m going to scream the whole game. I’ll make sure both score. A lot.”
She has seen each of them win a Super Bowl, but at the end of the night it will be bittersweet for her to know that only one of them will have a second ring.
“Someone will definitely go home a loser, and one of them will have their heart broken for not hitting their brother,” Donna said. “It’s going to come down to that, it’s going to come down to bragging rights.”
It was a boastful childhood in the Kelce home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio.
“It was always a competition,” Donna said. “Who comes to the table first? Who has the last chicken wing? Who gets in the front seat of the car? Who takes the elevator and gets to the bottom floor first? It was always competition. And they don’t like to lose. They want to win, and that’s just the way they are.”
Donna KelceDonna Kelce/Twitter
Jason, 35, is two years older than Travis.
“You guys hate each other growing up, but later in life you’re best buddies because you’ve been through everything together, so it’s kind of fun,” Donna said.
Kelce vs. Kelce would steel them both.
“They competed with the best they had in town. … It lived right next to them, you know?” she said. “In the next room. Whether it was mini hockey in the basement or whatever, it was always a competition.”
Football wasn’t their first love, but of course they rooted for the Browns.
“It’s just surreal,” Donna said. “It’s like you’re in a dream and you don’t really know if it’s happening. We’ve been thinking for the last 10 years that Travis was in the league that he might play them one day but they usually only play every four years so they would only meet in the Super Bowl but during the season quite a few Years. I know they’ve been talking about this since they were 10.
“But the scenario was always that they were on the same team, and they were with the Brownies. So they both had Bernie Kosar jerseys and shorts and everything and helmets.”
Travis Kelce celebrates after the Chiefs beat the Bengals 23-20 in the AFC Championship. Getty Images
Before their NFL dream, the boys had another dream.
“They both had the hockey dream,” she said. “That’s what they wanted to play. They have been skating for most of their lives since they were 3 years old. They loved football, they liked to watch it, but they couldn’t play it until middle school.
“I remember Travis came up to me a year ago and said, ‘I want to go to Canada and go to the junior leagues.’ And I’m like, ‘There’s no way I’m going to let someone else raise my kid. He was good enough, he could have played anywhere, he was really, really good. But it’s like being away from your family most of the year. It just wasn’t an option.”
Football wasn’t an option at first because mom didn’t want to let it happen.
“I wouldn’t allow that,” she said. “No one ever says, ‘I was the greatest peewee football player of all time.’ And it’s not very well organized. So there’s always suspicious parents and injuries and stuff like that. They’re not really trained coaches, so I made them wait until they were in middle school to play soccer. They played in seventh and eighth grade.”
They didn’t play soccer together until they attended the University of Cincinnati in 2009. They didn’t play together in high school when Jason was a senior and Travis, then quarterback, was a sophomore because Travis missed the season.
‘Because he failed French. And I wouldn’t take him to summer school,” Donna said. “I said, ‘No, mate, you screwed up, you gotta pay for it.’ So he didn’t play with him.”
Eagles general manager Howie Roseman, center, stands with defensive end Brandon Graham (55), offensive tackle Lane Johnson (65), defensive tackle Fletcher Cox and center Jason Kelce (62) after their NFC Championship win.AP
The boys played lacrosse in middle school and Jason played it in high school.
“Travis was a very good pitcher, so he did that,” she said. “Jason played hockey throughout high school and Travis switched from hockey to basketball when he became a freshman in high school.”
It was hockey at age 10 or 11 that led Jason to his schoolboy passions as a linebacker and eventually an Eagles center.
“I remember the first time Jason played hockey,” Donna said, “when you were a squirt and could actually start checking people out, he just walked up to me with this beaming look on his face and said, ‘ Mummy. I’ve finally found what I’m really, really good at!’ ”
Family KelceDonna Kelce/Twitter
Regarding Jason, she said: “He has many layers. He’s a very passionate person and he doesn’t do well in a team of people who don’t make an effort. So he really found his own when he got into the pros, where everyone works their ass off to be the best they can be. He doesn’t like loafers, he just doesn’t. He was never good at handling that. Because he tried so hard and played so emotionally and won, Jason spent a lot of time in the box when he was playing hockey. Also for lacrosse. He was always the most punished person.”
Referring to Travis, she said, “He just loves life. He loves everything about being outside, being around people, doing things. He’s very ambitious, a lot like Jason, but more than anything, the friends and family he has and the friends he’s kept over the years, he’s just a die-hard good friend. He’s helped people in many ways over the years, whether their bike got stolen or something, he’s such a community guy.”
Similar but different.
Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, left, talks to his brother, Eagles center Jason Kelce after they exchanged jerseys after an NFL football game in Kansas City, Missouri September 17, 2017.AP
“You know they’re very, very similar, both energetic, both fun,” she said. “Jason is more thoughtful and he’s very calculating. And Travis is more in the moment. So that’s basically how they differ. They both love being outside and enjoying people… not much of a difference.”
Donna, her brother and ex-husband Ed were at Lincoln Financial Field for the NFC Championship game and then met up at Chickie’s and Pete’s – Ed left in the fourth quarter and walked 20 minutes to the bar while Donna and her brother took the police escort — to watch the Chiefs beat the Bengals.
“I have a jersey where each shoulder is different,” she said. “One is an Eagles and the other is a Chiefs. And I have an Eagles jersey on the back and a Chiefs jersey on the front with their numbers on them. It has a 62 on the back and an 87 on the front. Travis had this custom made.”
She will arrive in Arizona on Monday and expects to wear it to the Kelce Bowl.
“People want to talk to the mother for some reason,” she said. “I do not know why. They are the ones who put in all the hard work and did it all. I just drove them. “Do you want to play lacrosse? OK let’s go.’ ”
She feels blessed to be the mother of two NFL players and two good people. The limelight awaits them.
“I’m fine,” Donna said. “I am simply myself. People either accept me for who I am… Not the most beautiful person, I’m very average, but I’m a good mother and I think everyone can relate to that.”
America’s First Mom on Super Bowl Sunday. A mother who writes history.