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Taylor Swift is the surrogate big sister you’d expect.
Wrestler Jeff Jarrett said the “Fortnight” singer, 34, really helped his family when they were going through a “really, really dark time.” Jarrett, 56, explained that Swift was a huge support to his young daughters when his wife, Jill Gregory, was sick with cancer. Speaking to WREG News Channel 3 On Friday, July 5, Jarrett was asked if it was true that Swift used to babysit his children.
“You know, that story is really exaggerated, but she’s a friend of the family,” he said. “My wife got sick and she passed away. But Taylor was like a big sister and would come over and take the girls and bake cookies and just hang out at the house. I can’t say enough good things about Taylor.” Jarrett’s wife tragically died of breast cancer in May 2007. Swift released her debut album in 2006, so the Grammy winner was only about 17 at the time.
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“She’s such a sweetheart,” Jarrett continued, adding how proud he was of her success. “I still call her ‘our girl.’” However, the AEW Director of Business Development clarified that Swift never expected to be paid for spending time with the girls. “I can tell you this right now. She was never on Jeff Jarrett’s payroll, so technically not a babysitter,” he said.
As time went on, Swift remained close to the Jarrett family. The wrestler’s children even appeared in the music video for Swift’s 2010 single “Mine.” Jarrett had previously spoken openly about the experience in a 2021 interview with Instinct Culture“The ‘Mine’ video is so creative,” he said, “and my daughter Jaclyn looked like a little Taylor.”
He explained that she showed up one day and “Taylor, who’s always so sassy, just said, ‘I want Jaclyn in the video.’” Jarrett said the entire family went to Maine for the production, which he called “a good experience for the kids.” Jeff added, “We all enjoyed it as a family. So the ‘Mine’ video, you can see the Jarrett kids in the video.”
Later in the interview, he couldn’t help but wax lyrical about Swift’s talent in the years since, praising her for being able to rule boardrooms as a young girl. “Not only is she super creative and talented and just thinks like an artist, but she also has the ability to think like a businesswoman. And those two skills combined, you rarely see that,” he said, adding, “She deserves all the success that she has.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
