This week is full of religious holidays: Yom Kippur is on Wednesday and Thursday, and, for those who celebrate, a new Taylor Swift album drops on Friday.

I enjoy Taylor Swift’s music and I’m happy for her success, but I can’t call myself a real fan. These days, real Swifties follow T-Swizzle with a fervor I don’t have and can’t conjure. But I am interested in how Swift’s life turns out, because she’s become a cultural icon for so many.

After several very public rollercoaster relationships, Taylor Swift got engaged this summer to NFL tight end Travis Kelce. They’re a match made in celebrity heaven. So what—if anything—does their relationship tell us about modern romance, you know, for regular people? 

They are getting married

First, it’s worth noting that they are getting married. They could have just remained “partners” for life or for a decade or whatever, but Swift and Kelce are embracing the institution of marriage. Most young people (69%) still say they want to get married one day, although this number has decreased since 2008, when it stood at 81%. 

Some people might see marriage as an outdated tradition. Some might be cynical or disillusioned because they’ve experienced or witnessed divorce in their families of origin. But it’s encouraging to see a high-profile celebrity couple actually tying the knot and not just languishing in long-term coupledom or cohabitation.

Marriage is the highest form of commitment, and for most people represents a total merging of two lives. And marriage is still the best, most stable environment to welcome a child … maybe a Taylor Jr. one day?

They’re both in their thirties

I wouldn’t be surprised if a baby was part of the gameplan for Kelce and Swift, who are both 35.

Mid-thirties is not an unusual age to get married these days. The average age at first marriage is 28.6 for women and 30.2 for men, and these ages increase with level of education. (Taylor Swift is exceptional; she has an honorary Ph.D. from NYU.)

People who marry later in life are often more established financially. That’s definitely the case for Swift, who is the world’s richest living female musician. Her net worth is estimated to be $1.6 billion. And age comes with maturity, meaning people might know better what they want in a spouse or what their motivations are for getting married. 

But there are downsides to later marriage as well. For one thing, it’s harder and less likely that couples will “wait” until marriage. And there is a strong association between a greater number of premarital sex partners and a higher risk of divorce. 

And getting married later means there’s less time left on the biological clock, so to speak, so having kids can be a greater challenge. 

They met in the new old-fashioned way

Kelce and Swift have already overcome the greatest challenge to love in the 21st century, the challenge of finding one another. Their origin story is cute, but also instructive for modern daters: He made a bold first move, and then “her people reached out to his people.” 

At one of Swift’s concerts, Travis Kelce reportedly attempted to give her a friendship bracelet with his phone number on it (adorable!) but failed. He went on to talk about this on a podcast, which she heard about, and apparently asked her people to look into.

Now, not a lot of regular people are going to connect with someone this way. But many people have met essentially because “her people reached out to his people.” They met through friends! About 15% of married couples met this way, and this percentage has remained stable, even in the age of online dating. So if you’re single … ask your friends to help you mingle. 

And modern women still prefer that men make the first move. One recent poll shows that 93% of single women want and expect men to make the first move. It doesn’t have to be a friendship bracelet, but from what I hear from single friends, there are far worse ways to be approached.

She’s more successful than him

Travis Kelce’s net worth is only $70 million. Poor guy. 

But in seriousness, compared to his girl, Kelce is the less successful of the two. This reflects another reality among younger people: Women are often more educated and successful than their male peers. 

This poses a challenge for marriage-minded women, particularly at the opposite end of the income spectrum from Taylor Swift. While it’s admirable how Travis Kelce supports Taylor Swift’s career and seems undaunted by her incredible success, the “reverse gender gap” among non-college-educated people often spells trouble. 

The pool of men available to non-college-educated women to marry has fared worse and worse on important measures, including earnings. While “marrying down” is an option for women of various education levels (and more and more women do it), it’s hardest for women at the bottom level, who don’t want to marry men who, frankly, don’t have their lives together. 

Hey, they can’t all be Travis Kelce. But if there are takeaways from this very high-profile love story, it’s that marriage still matters, even if it comes later in life for many people, and that an earnest guy can still get the girl if he’s stable enough—and willing to put himself out there. As they say in his line of business, he’s made a great catch.