Jason and Travis Kelce didn’t always play it safe. Long before their NFL fame, the brothers were known for causing chaos. Always up to mischief, this often kept their mom, Donna Kelce, on her toes. In fact, she recently shared an incident that started as quiet playfulness between the brothers but soon took a dangerous turn.

“I used to have to keep the keys up high, just like I had to keep the knives up high. And Travis, for some reason, was opening up the drawers, and he was climbing up them. He was three, climbing up the cupboards to get to the keys,” Donna Kelce said on Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce.

While many would have thought that the knives would have been the far more dangerous object to grab, Travis’s playfully astute mind sent this story into a different gear.

“I don’t know how he did it, but somehow, and thank goodness, it was not automatic. He put the keys in the car. He knew exactly what to do and turned it on, and it jumped.” Donna noted. “It went right through the garage door, and Jason, thank goodness, was sitting next to him, and he was just so excited, but he could have been standing in front of it,” she added.

Somehow, Travis had driven straight into the garage, with Jason riding shotgun, eager and oblivious to how narrowly disaster had been avoided. That wasn’t the only heart-in-throat moment Donna had to bear. Once, when Jason picked up knives and began tossing them into the air while Travis looked on, Donna realized the wild energy wasn’t just playful, it was risky. 

Between the car crash and the airborne blades, raising two future NFL stars was anything but quiet. They were not the only brothers to give their parents a run for their money, though. The Watt brothers, J.J., T.J., and Derek, once turned their family’s basement into a battleground, breaking lamps, TVs, and occasionally each other in their relentless competitions.

The Kelce brothers may have grown into disciplined athletes, but Donna didn’t sugar-coat the difficulty of parenting those early years. She also shared a fun fact about herself from back when she was not a parent. 

Donna Kelce’s grounded parenthood

Before she became the mother of Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce, Donna Kelce took to the skies. She learned to fly a plane and even got her hands on the controls.

“I did learn how to be a pilot before I had children. I actually went up and flew a plane,” Donna Kelce said. “But you want to have children, and it was really expensive, so I had to stop. I did this way before the kids were even born.”

As she weighed options, Donna and her husband decided to settle down. They chose to build a home and planned their family’s future. The expense and demands of flying grew heavy, and Donna did not look back with regret. She embraced her decision and remains grateful for the time with her sons and the life she built around them. 

“Mom has told me this before. I knew she never completed the training, but she got fairly far along. But this hasn’t been brought up in a long time. We gotta get her back in the pilot’s seat!!,” Jason Kelce wrote.   

In response to his wife’s jab, Travis Kelce dropped a comment on the post by Kylie Kelce. He took the opportunity to give his mom a chance to fulfill her dreams of being a pilot and complete her training.  

Eventually, Donna’s runway became the daily routine of raising two future NFL stars. She views that trade as meaningful to her journey. Now, as Jason and Travis cheer her on, the same mischief that once tested her patience might just help her dreams take flight again