It’s a question Colin Jost probably has gotten countless times since he and Scarlett Johansson started dating back in 2017, but never from a guy who gets it as much as Travis Kelce does.
“How nice is it to be the less famous person in the relationship?” Taylor Swift‘s fiancé asked Jost on the latest episode of his “New Heights” podcast, released May 13.
“Huge relief,” responded Jost. “Really.”
The Kelces Welcome Jost to “The Plus One Fraternity”
Kelce co-hosts the show with his brother, former Eagles center Jason Kelce, whose own wife, Kylie Kelce, launched her own wildly popular podcast “Not Gonna Lie” in 2024. Travis, in turn, refers to himself and his brother as “members of the plus one fraternity,” and welcomes Jost to the club.
Jost points out that there are pros and cons to being the “plus one” in a celebrity relationship, particularly when you are actually a celebrity yourself.
“It’s really funny because I feel like I’m probably almost approached more because she’s less approachable,” the SNL Weekend Update host explains. “So, you know what I mean? Because I’m on TV, I have like a lesser … people are just like, I’m in their living room, so they’re just like, ‘Hey what’s up man, how’s it going?’”
An unexpected side effect of fame? Apparently, the quality of sandwiches.
“If we like go to like go buy a sandwich or something, she’ll order and the person will recognize her and then doesn’t write down anything about the sandwich,” laughs Jost. “Completely distracted, all the ingredients are wrong. We’ll open the sandwich and nothing is [right]. It’s really funny. It’s like bread and just, like, a pickle.”
Jost Is Used to the Jokes
Jost and Johansson, who married in 2020, initially met at “Saturday Night Live.” Ever since the relationship went public, the relationship has been fodder for the show’s writers, typically at Jost’s expense.
“Zoe Saldaña, who stars in the new ‘Avatar’ movie, has surpassed Scarlett Johansson to become the highest-grossing actress of all time,” said Jost on the show’s January 17, 2026 episode, setting up a joke. “Okay, well let’s see what happens when you include the box office from Scarlett’s husband’s movies.”
The chart on screen then shows the fictional statistics of Jost’s filmography subtracting from his wife’s box office success. “It went down?” he exclaims, hands up in disbelief.
Jost is most likely to get in trouble during the SNL season finale, when he and co-host Michael traditionally write jokes for each other designed to make the other person squirm. Johansson is often caught in the crosshairs.
“There’s been ones where he made me say a joke and the host that week came up to me after and was like, are you okay?” says Jost, who calls the ritual “terrifying.”
Taylor, Travis, and the Podcast That Brought Them Together
“New Heights” has been a significant part of the couple’s relationship since the very beginning, when Kelce shared his thwarted first attempt to meet Swift on the podcast. He wanted to give her a friendship bracelet with his phone number when the Eras tour stopped by the Chiefs’ home base, Arrowhead Stadium.
Swift was understandably busy that night, but appreciated Kelce’s public declaration after her previous suitors had been intimidated by her superstardom.
“When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care,” she told Time in 2023. “The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone. And we’re just proud of each other.”
In 2024, the couple got engaged after Kelce Swift’s first appearance on the podcast as a means of distracting the singer while he had the scene for a fairytale proposal set up in his backyard.
