People have told Kelley Thrasher nearly her entire adult life that she looks like Taylor Swift, a resemblance that hit home in a big, scary way one September night in 2011 at Swift’s Speak Now show at Arrowhead Stadium.
The year before, Thrasher had dressed like the pop singer for Halloween, so she wore the costume to the concert.
“And we got mobbed,” said Thrasher, who lives in Shawnee. “Kids. Moms. Everywhere. It’s me and two of my girlfriends. We’re trying to get away. One of my girlfriends yanked me out of the crowd and said, “she’s not Taylor!”
Though those around her knew she wasn’t Swift, “people were chanting ‘Taylor’ in my section,” she said. “The whole concert, moms were coming up to me ... all these parents were asking for photos.”
Watching people go wild over her, one of Thrasher’s friends encouraged her to consider a side gig as a Taylor Swift tribute artist. But she didn’t do it until after a chance encounter with entertainer Bruno Mars during Super Bowl weekend earlier this year.
Now, Thrasher — who works as a full-time nanny — has a schedule bursting with public appearances, in which she poses for photos at kiddie birthday parties, conventions and local businesses. Last month she slicked on the red lipstick and helped merchants in The Shops of Prairie Village kick off a new Chiefs season.
Her Instagram is called Kelley’s Version.
She got a burst of national attention earlier this year when the morning show “LIVE with Kelly and Mark” featured her in a celebrity-lookalike segment.
Even when she’s not in full Swift mode, people mistake her for the superstar and take sly, and not so sly, photos and videos of her. She was in grunge rock-concert clothes at a recent 311 show “and people thought I was Taylor undercover. I’m like, nope. Definitely not.
“I think it’s just because it’s a Kansas City thing now because of her ties to Travis (Kelce). I just notice it more.”
Going to Kelce Jam in May turned out to be “the hard launch of my Taylor gig.”
“I mean, there were people staring the whole time,” she said. “I went into the bathroom and came out of the stall and this woman looked like she was about to die. Another girl, kind of at the end of the bathroom, said ,‘Oh my God, there’s Taylor Swift!’
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’ve gotta get out of here.’ If there were some really drunk people, they really thought it was her.”
Thrasher said with laugh that she needs a shirt that says, “Not Taylor’s Version.”
It’s the makeup, right?
Thrasher was a pre-kindergarten teacher for 15 years ... until last year, when she turned her summertime work as a nanny into a full-time job.
She’s happier now. More money, shorter work week, less stress and more time to spend one-on-one with her 1-year-old charge.
For the record, Thrasher is six years older than Swift and has worn red lipstick and cat-eye makeup since her party days in KC as a 20-something — long before Swift did. “Actually, the older she got the more we started looking alike,” said Thrasher, who is 40.
“I don’t really see it as much as other people see it. But sometimes there’s pictures of her and I’m, ‘oh, I really see myself in this picture.’”
About 10 years ago, during a hiking trip to Colorado, Thrasher and her husband pulled into a McDonald’s to use the restroom. As she passed a group of teenagers inside, she heard their excitement.
“There’s Taylor Swift!”
The kids rushed to the windows to watch Thrasher, grubby and sweaty after the hike, walk back to the car.
“They think I look like Taylor Swift,” she told her husband.
“You’re in a Captain Morgan T-shirt,” he said, incredulous.
Turns out Thrasher isn’t the only Swift doppelganger in town. Kansas City cosplayer April Gloria attracted national attention in 2017 when a teen magazine pointed out how much she looked like the singer in her Instagram selfies. She took photos with her cats, a la Swift herself. And she’s still dressing like the singer, as she did when she attended the Eras Tour show at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium last July.
TikToker and former Florida nurse Ashley Leechin is possibly the most famous of all Swift lookalikes. Last year she visited a plastic surgeon who debunked rumors that she had surgery to copy Swift’s face.
Thrasher, who considers herself the biggest fan of another superstar, Lady Gaga, jokes that she herself was “born this way.”
(Her bangs were actually inspired by Gaga’s “Poker Face” hair, not Swift’s.)
Thrasher said she’s been a Swift fan “for a long time,” going back to at least 2008, when Swift — as a teenager — entertained college basketball fans at the NCAA Men’s Final Four festivities in San Antonio. Thrasher was there to watch the Kansas Jayhawks, who won their third national championship that year.
That was back in Swift’s curly-hair days. “And I didn’t think we looked alike at all then,” Thrasher said. “I was always straightening my hair.”
Since then she’s seen three of Swift’s concert tours, except for her most recent Eras Tour stop in Kansas City.
Thanks, Ticketmaster debacle.
But by then, Thrasher had already had a life-altering encounter with a “24K Magic” man.
‘Go Chiefs!’
Thrasher and a couple of girlfriends went to Las Vegas during Super Bowl week to be around the festivities.
A friend who works at the Bellagio got them into the soft launch of the hotel’s new cocktail lounge: The Pinky Ring By Bruno Mars.
The friend sat them at a table near Mars himself.
“We were walking in and my girlfriend said, ‘Bruno Mars just pointed at you and said is that Taylor Swift?’” Thrasher recalled. “So we’re sitting at the table and the waitress comes over and says, ‘These shots are from Bruno.’ My girlfriend is dying laughing.
“So I pick up my shot glass and he’s like five feet away. I wink. ‘Thanks, Bruno!’ He runs over to us and puts his hand in and says, ‘Go Chiefs!’
“It was one of the craziest nights.”
Thrasher chatted with Mars several times over the next few hours. At one point, Mars asked, “Hey girl, how much do you get paid to look like that?”
When Thrasher told him, “This is just how I look,” Mars said: “You need to monetize that (stuff.)“
“And that’s why I’m here,” she said.
‘Making a lot of people happy’
One of Thrasher’s most popular costumes is a sparkly blue-fringed leotard like the one Swift wears during the “Midnights” segment of her Eras Tour show.
But she especially likes another costume Swift wears on the tour: black-sequined shorts paired with a white T-shirt that says, “A lot going on at the moment.”
Thrasher sings, but rarely does so at parties when she’s dressed as Swift. Usually kids want to sing Swift songs for her, she said.
She’s gotten over her initial concern that people would think she was trying to maliciously fool people into thinking she’s the real Swift. Instead, people treat her like a Disney princess.
Matt Black knows something about looking like a celebrity. Chiefs and NFL fans know the guy with the big walrus-bushy mustache and glasses as “Almost Andy Reid,” the popular doppelganger of the Chiefs’ head coach.
Black is a busy guy, popping up everywhere from grand openings for local businesses to TV commercials, on podcasts and at NFL training camps.
“When I walk down the street and I see somebody look at me and just laugh or smile, I know that just the fact that I look like Andy Reid just brightens somebody’s day,” said Black, who lives in Lee’s Summit.
“I think what Kelley is doing is exactly the same thing. She’s making a lot of people happy. I’m so excited for her.”
Once Thrasher’s influencer friend Jolene Mendez — JoMama on TikTok — posted a couple of videos of Thrasher walking around town dressed like Swift, word traveled fast and requests for appearances poured in. She’s appeared at a lot of local med spas, some of which have paid her with facials.
A YouTuber known by his millions of followers for staging pranks wanted her to fly to Los Angeles to help him punk people. She didn’t go. A Patrick Mahomes lookalike wants to work with her, too.
“People are wanting to book me out way far in advance. I tell them I’ll have to let you know,” she said. “I don’t know if I want to be booked.
“It’s kinda weird, but it’s fun. I’m just taking it all in stride.”
She would like to do some appearances with Black, but they just haven’t been able to sync up their busy schedules yet.
She’s never met Swift but has met Kelce a few times over the years. Funny. Nice. Hilarious. He’s all those things, she said — “exactly who you think he is.”
Looking like a famous person has given Black the chance to help raise money for local charities, and he’s excited to see whether Thrasher does the same. He can envision joint appearances — “Andy Reid” and “Taylor Swift.”
“That’s what’s most important when you’re given a rare gift, like the two of us have been,” he said. “To give back to the community.”
For now, Thrasher is just enjoying the ride.
“It’s all in good fun,” she said. “The way i see it, Taylor can’t be everywhere at once … just like Santa. I am just Taylor’s helper because it’s impossible to be all places at once.”
