NASCAR driver Josh Berry might have walked the same high school hallways as Taylor Swift, but he’s learned his lesson about discussing his former classmate.
“It’s one of those things when you’re doing an interview one day and somebody’s like, ‘Hey, what’s a funny, crazy story about you?’” Berry, 34, said on a recent episode of the “Rubbin’ Is Racing” podcast. “I’m like, ‘Oh, I went to school with Taylor Swift.’ You don’t think that’s that big of a deal. But good gosh, man. It never ends.”
Berry and Swift, 35, both attended Henderson High School in Henderson, Tennessee. Swift completed 9th and 10th grades at the school before transferring to Aaron Academy, which offered homeschooling, to accommodate her blossoming music career.
“She was in a different grade,” Berry explained. “I didn’t really know her. I know of somebody who knew her kind of deal. But I didn’t really know her.”
Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift make it a point to spend as much time together as they can. “I see her when I see her,” Sheeran, 34, said during his Wednesday, April 9, appearance on the “Call Her Daddy” podcast. “I probably see her, like, four times a year.” Their hangouts these days are “proper […]
Berry said the questions about his history with Swift kicked into overdrive when a certain member of the Kansas City Chiefs came into her life.
“Then she starts dating Travis Kelce and it all comes back again,” Berry lamented. “I’m like, ‘I don’t care about Travis Kelce. He has nothing to do with me.’ It just never ends.”
Though he didn’t attend Henderson High, Berry also grew up near Indycar superstar Josef Newgarden, who was a student at Pope Saint John Paul II Preparatory School, less than 5 miles away in the same town.
“With Josef, we were both in school at the same time but we really didn’t know each of us raced,” Berry said. “He didn’t really know I raced, I didn’t really know he raced. We were around each other, but didn’t really connect the dots.”
Swift and her family moved from Pennsylvania to Hendersonville in 2004 so the burgeoning superstar could be closer to a prosperous music scene. When Swift’s mother, Andrea, informed former Henderson High School principal Paul Decker about those plans, he recalled being skeptical.
“Being at Hendersonville High School and as much music as there is in this area, I thought, ‘You don’t know how many times I’ve heard that right here in this office,’” Decker told WKRN-TV Nashville in a story published on Friday, April 11. “But I did say, ‘Well, I hope it works out for you.’”
Swift’s former teacher, Lile Rogers, told the outlet that she was “very nice and very sweet and not a diva at all.”
