Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce wedding ceremony: Ex-MLB star has enjoyable story

We may never know the entire guest list for the wedding of Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and superstar singer Taylor Swift, but there were some unexpected folks at Madison Square Garden.

For instance, Rams wide receiver Cooper Kupp attended the nuptials — to his own surprise. And former Van Horn High School standout turned Major League Baseball star Rick Sutcliffe was there. Sutcliffe took the opportunity to do some genealogy research.

While on Ryan Ripken’s podcast, Sutcliffe talked about the wedding of the century and chatting up a music legend.

“I think the best part for me, we probably talked for 20 minutes with Sir Paul McCartney, who actually got up and sang a couple of songs,” mentioned Sutcliffe, who famous his lengthy friendship with Kelce. “And I mean, he couldn’t have sounded any better 40 years ago. I mean, he crushed it. ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand.’ ‘She Was Just (17).’ It was so great. Stevie Nicks got up. But I was talking to him, and I don’t know if it’s true or not, OK? But I was told as a kid that my great great uncle Stuart Sutcliffe was an original Beatle, and Paul McCartney is sitting there, and I have to go ask him.

“I said, ‘Paul, I’m Rick Sutcliffe. I used to play baseball.’ ‘Yeah, are you still playing?’ ‘No, I’m not still playing. I kind of laughed at that. ‘I got to ask you something. I was told by my parents that Stuart Sutcliffe was a great uncle of mine. It’s in our family tree. It’s in the Beatles’ diary.’ ‘And he goes, ‘Oh, Uncle Stu, Uncle Stu! He made a big mistake. Oh, he made a mistake.’ And I’m like, ‘What? What was the mistake?’ He goes, ‘He met this girl over in Hamburg, Germany, and she told him that he needed to stay with her instead of going with that band that wasn’t going to go anywhere.’”

Stuart Sutcliffe was the original bass player for the Beatles, but he left in July 1961 to pursue his art career.

In the Beatles Anthology book, the late George Harrison talked about Stuart Sutcliffe’s decision to leave the band to pursue his art career.

“Stuart was engaged to Astrid (Kirchherr) and after that trip decided that he was going to leave the band and live in Germany because Eduardo Paolozzi was coming to be the lecturer at Hamburg Art College,” Harrison said. “Stu had never really been that singled-minded about music. We liked him in the band: he looked great and he’d learnt enough to get by but he was never totally convinced that he was going to be a musician.”

Stuart Sutcliffe died at the age of 21 in 1962, a year before the Beatles become one of the most famous bands in the world.

Rick Sutcliffe, who was the 1979 Rookie of the Year with the Dodgers and 1984 Cy Young Award winner with the Cubs, apparently might just have a little-known connection to the Beatles.

That gave Sutcliffe an excuse to talk with one of the most famous rock stars of all-time, and simply made The Wedding all that much more fun.

Sutcliffe told Ripken, who is the son of Orioles legend Cal Ripken, Jr., the guest list was crazy.

“I looked at my wife and as we left, and I went, ‘I’m sorry, honey.’ She goes, ‘For what?’ I go, ‘Well, our wedding wasn’t anything like that.’ We grew up in Independence, Missouri, man,” Sutcliffe said.

“It was a who’s who. I mean, it’d be easier to tell you who wasn’t there than who was. No, we’ve just been blessed.”

This story was initially revealed August 20, 2026 at 12:16 PM.