Taylor Swift Addresses Viral Rumor She Dated a 17-Year-Old High Schooler — And What Followed

Because nothing on the internet ever truly stays buried, Taylor Swift's brief 2012 fling with Conor Kennedy is suddenly back in the discourse — right when she's having a moment with The Life of a Showgirl rolling out and an engagement to Travis Kelce. The resurfaced story is messy, very online, and filled with those odd little details that make you say, wait, what?

Why this is back in the feed now

Old reports and screenshots are circulating again about Swift dating Conor Kennedy — yes, of that Kennedy family — when she was 22 and he was 17 and still in high school. A viral thread lays out the greatest hits: private jets, a very expensive house purchase next to the Kennedy compound, and that infamous wedding incident. Fair warning: some of what people are sharing are claims from the time and not all of it was confirmed then or now.

The 2012 summer fling, the quick version

• July 2012: Swift and Conor (son of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) start showing up together in Hyannis Port. Think beach walks and trampolines. Eyewitnesses said they looked couple-y.
• August 2012: The relationship is essentially confirmed in the tabloids. Around the same time, Swift buys a $4.8 million place near the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port. That, combined with Conor's very public family grief after his mother Mary's death by suicide that spring, sent the coverage into overdrive.
• What insiders were saying then: One source claimed Swift missed Conor so much that she sent a private plane to pick him up in Hyannis Port and fly him to her, that his family didn't know when he'd be back, and that things had gotten serious fast — fast enough that locals wouldn't have been shocked if they eloped. Social posts now are also alleging she sometimes picked him up from high school. Take that last bit as online chatter unless/until someone produces something solid.
• Backstory threads: Swift met Conor through his aunt Rory Kennedy in 2011 (Rory had reached out for concert tickets), and Taylor turned up at Sundance in January 2012 for the premiere of Rory's doc 'Ethel.' Ethel Kennedy herself reportedly said the family would be lucky if Taylor ever became a Kennedy.
• September 2012: It's over. The pair 'quietly parted ways' after roughly three months together. Fans have long speculated that 'Begin Again' on Red nods to this chapter.

The age-gap debate (and Taylor's response)

Here's the sticking point: at the time, she was 22; he was 17 and a high school junior. That age math is why this keeps getting dragged back up, especially as clips of Taylor laughing off the old kidnapping rumor recirculate. In an interview back then, she waved the accusation away with this:

'How did I kidnap him? You can't kidnap a grown man! These are serious accusations, now! It's an interesting way to spin something into a story.'

That line is now being quote-tweeted with context reminders that he was not, in fact, a grown man by any legal definition at the time. Some posts are eye-roll snarky about it, which... the internet was the internet long before 2025.

The wedding-crash story that will not die

Also back in rotation: the alleged wedding crash. The claim, reported back then by the Boston Herald, goes like this — Conor had not RSVP'd to a relative's wedding (Michael and Victoria Gifford Kennedy's daughter, who was marrying Liam Kerr). He reportedly texted last minute asking to come and to bring Swift. Victoria said she told them not to. She later said she asked Swift to leave twice because the entrance pulled focus from the bride, and she did not want her daughter's spotlight split.

Swift's camp pushed back at the time, saying the story was untrue, that she was invited, and that the bride thanked her for being there. Taylor herself later said she would never knowingly show up somewhere she wasn't invited or try to upstage a bride, chalking the whole thing up to a misunderstanding. The two sides never matched, and they still don't.

About that age detail everyone keeps misreporting

You'll see some posts say she was 23. For accuracy's sake: she spent that summer at 22 and turned 23 in December, a few months after the relationship had already ended. Conor was 17 the whole time they were together. Inside baseball, but if we are going to keep re-litigating this, let's at least get the ages right.

Where this lands now

It was a whirlwind teenage summer romance on his side and a three-month chapter on hers — one that will apparently outlive us all in the group chat. People are going to read the same timeline and feel very differently about it. The internet clearly has.