At 28, Ilona Maher has already accomplished quite a lot of things. An Olympic medal to a spot in the finals at the 33rd season of Dancing With The Stars, 2024 has been an especially good year for the Quinnipiac rugby star. Maher’s feats in recent months have catapulted her into fame and the fans can’t get enough of her. However, now it seems even national sensations seem to want to be a part of the Burlington native’s fandom.

Super Bowl winner Jason Kelce certainly knows what it means to bask in the admiration of fans. After over a decade with the Philadelphia Eagles, Kelce is no stranger to the spotlight. Yet, Ilona Maher’s achievements have turned the 37-year-old into a fan himself—so much so that Kelce has no qualms about expressing his admiration for her publicly.

A closet Ilona Maher fan came out in Paris

Maher’s mom Mieneke recently spilled the beans at the Got It From My Momma podcast on how the Maher family got to meet and interact with Jason Kelce in the City of Love during the 2024 Olympics. In the YouTube upload from October 29, Mrs. Maher talked about how she and her husband Michael were initially taken aback realizing they were in close proximity to the ex-NFL player. “We live in a very small, like one of the smallest per population states in the United States, Vermont. Who would have ever thought that we’d be standing in a room with Kylie Kelce and her husband?” Ilona’s mom said.

She went on to recall how the former football star got to learn a few tricks of the trade of her daughter’s sport from her husband. “My husband who you know is a huge also football fan got to throw and teach Jason, a famous football player, how to throw a rugby ball,” grinned Mieneke. But that wasn’t all! Kelce turned out to be such a fan of Maher that his gaze was caught by the shirts the Maher family had on.

“We had shirts made with Ilona’s heads on them. The fascinating thing is that my husband had actually had one made like two years ago but never had an opportunity to wear it,” the Olympian’s mom candidly revealed. But a trip to Madrid, Spain changed all that. She went on, “He actually wore it when we were in Madrid Spain, and you know got a little notoriety because of that. So then we made one for the whole family, like everybody had one.” And Kelce needed one too. “I held it up I actually literally put it on him and then he went on his way to I believe gymnastics,” laughed the nursing student’s mother heartily. And realizing how popular her daughter is, it’s no wonder Mieneke Maher is feeling even more emotional at Ilona’s DWTS stint.

A new adventure made Mommy dearest proud

Over the past couple of months, the Olympic medalist has been blurring the lines between femininity and empowerment. Signing up for Dancing With The Stars with professional dancer Alan Bersten, Maher has been enthralling fans by showing is as graceful a dancer as her powerful takedowns on the rugby field. But her latest adventure has only made Mieneke emotional. Watching her daughter breaking stereotypes every week, Mieneke could barely hold back her tears of joy. Remembering how Ilona had to go through body-shaming to rise above the harsh words and show that she could still achieve her goals, her mom has been justifiably overwhelmed.

But for the athlete, it was instead a full circle moment. “She used to let us stay up late to watch Dancing with the Stars when we were younger, and then afterwards my sisters and I would do a dance in the living room and pretend to do the cha-cha,” Ilona said. While she was adding new feathers to her hat, the trolls kept coming, and that infuriated Mieneke a lot, who said, “It’s just a sad statement of society in general to see people that will hide behind a screen and write things that you’d never say to someone in person.” Do you also agree with her? Tell us more in the comment section!