Taylor Swift’s Favorite Teacher, Who Later Became Her Bodyguard, Died the Day She Married Travis Kelce
Kirk Schwabe taught criminal justice at Hendersonville High School in the mid-2000s, and one of his teenage students was Taylor Swift, who has long called it the most exciting class she ever took. She thought enough of him to name a teacher character “Mr. Schwabe” in the 2010 film “Valentine’s Day.”
A few years later he came back into her life in a different role, joining her security team around 2009 at her father’s request and eventually becoming her personal bodyguard. His family says he treated her like one of his own daughters. Schwabe died July 3 at 69, after a battle with metastatic kidney cancer, the same day Swift married Travis Kelce.
Before he ever stood guard at a Taylor Swift concert, Kirk Schwabe stood at the front of a classroom at Hendersonville High School outside Nashville. He was a former Chicago police officer teaching criminal justice, and in the mid-2000s a teenage Swift sat in his class. She has often said it was the most exciting class she ever took, and fans have long tied that fascination to songs like “No Body, No Crime.” In 2010, she named a teacher character after him, Mr. Schwabe, in the film “Valentine’s Day.”
Around 2009, her father Scott Swift asked Schwabe to help look after his daughter, and Schwabe left teaching to join her security detail, eventually becoming her personal bodyguard. He later stepped back from the job, worn down by the pace of it, but stayed close to the family. His wife, Jane, told The Telegraph that he always treated Swift the way he treated his own daughters.
Schwabe died on July 3 at 69, from metastatic kidney cancer, after a rapid decline that had brought him into hospice only days earlier. It was the same day Swift married Travis Kelce at Madison Square Garden. In an interview with The Telegraph shortly before he died, he spoke about her wedding, calling her a superstar and saying simply, “She knows what’s best.”
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