Donna and Ed were married for nearly 25 years before divorcing after their sons Jason and Travis graduated college
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Donna Kelce is reflecting on her divorce from ex-husband Ed after their sons, Jason and Travis Kelce, graduated from college.
Donna, 71, sat down with Martha Stewart for an episode of The Martha Stewart Podcast, an iHeartPodcast, and shared how she and Ed “worked together” to raise their NFL star sons.
“It was after the kids were out of college” that they divorced, Donna began telling Stewart, 82. “We worked together as a team,” she continued.
Donna explained that it’s “very, very difficult to raise children on your own,” especially two sons with big dreams of becoming professional athletes.
“And with as active as they were, how do you do that on your own? So we decided that we would be married throughout the entire time that the kids were in the house, and that’s the way it worked out,” Donna shared.
Stewart told Donna it was “so smart and so lucky” that she and Ed chose that path, agreeing that it is “so hard” to raise children alone and that it was also “lucky” for Travis, 34, and Jason, 36, to have their parents under the same roof until they moved out.
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Donna and Ed were married for nearly 25 years. They raised Travis and Jason in Cleveland Heights, Ohio before both of their sons played football at the nearby University of Cincinnati.
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The couple first met when Donna was meant to go on a date with another man, they revealed on an episode of New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce.
On her way to the date, Donna stopped by a bar named Fagan’s in Old Cleveland Flats, where Ed also happened to swing by for an after-work drink. The two got to talking and Donna never went to meet the other guy.
“I was supposed to go out with a guy that night. We were supposed to go to a play, and I never made it. Your dad and I talked forever,” Donna told her sons on New Heights, adding jokingly, “It was a good play, too! I really wanted to see it.”
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Also on her sons’ popular podcast, Donna assured both Jason and Travis that she has no ill will toward their father and will always consider him a very important person in her life. “I don’t hate him. We’re friends to this day. We get along great,” Donna said on the podcast.
“We were like a tag team with you two. We got to do all sorts of fun things. When one of you had to go out of town, the other person would help with the other child. It was perfect.”
Donna explained, “sometimes people move apart.” When asked by her sons if she regrets marrying Ed, Donna responded, “No, never, because I got you two.”
In the 2023 Prime Video Sports documentary, Kelce, Donna and Ed talked about choosing to stay together for as long as they did for the benefit of their boys.
“If we had split as we probably both would have preferred, that would have been a nightmare with the logistics, getting kids where they had to be and providing all the support,” Ed explained in the film.
“Just trying to keep it all together when you’re being a parent,” Donna added. “It’s tough.”