Grateful Dolly Parton lays claim to Taylor Swift & Travis Kelce’s 1st-born. Why?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Swift and Kelce donated $2 million to Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program.
- State legislators cut Missouri funding from $6 million to $2 million.
- As of Thursday, Missouri could not enroll new children into the program.
This is one wedding gift Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce won’t be returning:
Dolly Parton singing to them.
The country singer posted a sweet thank you to the couple on Friday after learning they donated $2 million to her Imagination Library early literacy program.
On Thursday, Swift and Kelce announced through a representative that they donated $26 million to handpicked charities across the United States, including two in Kansas City.
Parton’s Imagination Library mails free, age-appropriate books every month to children from birth to age five. Parton launched it in 1995.
“I was just told that you two are making a donation of $2 million to my Imagination Library. Thank you, thank you, thank you, I’m blown away and overjoyed with that gratitude,” Parton said in a social media post Friday.
The donation is especially timely in Missouri where state legislators have cut more than half the funding to Parton’s program for the upcoming fiscal year as part of a controversial education spending bill.
Last year, the state contributed $6 million for Imagination Library, but that was reduced to $2 million for the upcoming fiscal year.
The cuts mean that, as of Thursday, Missouri is no longer be able to accept new children into the program, according to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The Imagination Library touches thousands of children across Missouri. As of March 31, 169,032 kids were enrolled in the program, about 45% of all children younger than 6 in Missouri.
Between 10,000 and 20,000 children in Jackson County alone are enrolled.
Missouri adopted the program in 2023 to make every child in the state eligible to participate. Parton visited Kansas City in 2023 and 2024 to promote the program.
Last month when The Star reached out to 11 KC-area lawmakers about the cut — nine Republicans and three Democrats — only Rep. Pattie Mansur, a Kansas City Democrat, and Rep. Aaron Crossley, an Independence Democrat, responded. They said they believed the state failed to deliver on promises of supporting early literacy.
“You know the mission of the Dollywood Foundation is to dream more, care more, learn more and be more,” Parton told Swift and Kelce in her message.
“And thank you again for your very generous gift and we’ll continue that mission even in bigger ways now with your money.”
She lauded the couple’s charitable tendencies, saying, “now it’s evident that you two have made giving back a key part of your lives. So hey, when you have your first-born can I have it, ‘cause that’s going to be one special baby.”
Was she speaking of godmother duties, perhaps? Parton is godmother to Miley Cyrus.
Parton signed off by singing the key line from her hit, “I Will Always Love You” and blew the couple a kiss.
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