The rumors are true: Ed Sheeran had no idea Taylor Swift was engaged to Travis Kelce until the couple announced the news on Instagram. But there’s a very reasonable explanation for why,

During her Monday night visit to The Tonight Show, Swift played a chaotic game of four lies and a truth with host Jimmy Fallon. After debunking several rumors, including why she turned down the Super Bowl halftime show, Fallon managed to guess the truth from the bundle of lies.

“I think it would be funny if Ed Sheeran learned about your engagement on Instagram,” he said, reading off one of the rumors.

“That’s so true,” Swift admitted with a laugh. While Fallon reeled — and flopped on the floor — over this reveal, Swift put her head in her hands.

“I have a perfect explanation,” she said, defending herself. “He doesn’t have a phone!”

Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran in 2013.

Anna Webber/Getty

As Fallon returned to his seat, Swift continued, “[Ed] doesn’t have a phone! This is one thing I do love about him, it’s very eccentric. Love it! But when I’m going through, being like, ‘Hey, hey, who should we call? Who should we FaceTime?’ I’m going through my texts, and being like, who have I texted within the last month of my life. And he just wasn’t there.”

Fallon quipped, “How do you get ahold of him? The Bat Signal?”

Unfortunately for the Life of a Showgirl singer, contacting Sheeran out of the blue requires a couple more steps than flashing a beacon in the night sky.

“You have to email him and then if you want to set up FaceTime he has to find an iPad and they have to give it to him like a child, like how you give the iPad to a child,” she shared. “This is one of my absolute favourite people on the planet. And then when the news came out I was like, ‘Oh my god! We forgot to call Ed!'”

She added, “He’s like family but he doesn’t have a phone.”

Swift and NFL star Kelce, who have been together for two years, announced their engagement on Aug. 26, after keeping the garden proposal under wraps for two weeks. The post read, “Your English teacher and your gym teacher are getting married.”

Ed Sheeran joins Taylor Swift onstage at the August 15, 2024 Eras Tour performance at Wembley Stadium.

Gareth Cattermole/TAS24/Getty

It’s actually a wonder that Sheeran managed to learn the news from Instagram, considering the singer has long been candid about the fact that he hasn’t owned a personal cell since 2015, when he opted to quit social media and get rid of his smartphone to get back in touch with real-life interaction. While he is back and active on Insta, the musician says he uses an iPad rather than a phone and replies to emails once a week to limit the amount of time he spends staring at a device.

Rest assured, even without a smartphone, Sheeran is back in the loop when it comes to Swift’s wedding plans. Last week, during her appearance on the U.K.’s Hits Radio Breakfast Show, the singer shared that she recently reunited with Sheeran at Selena Gomez’s wedding to Benny Blanco on Sept. 27 in Santa Barbara, Calif., where they chatted about the joy of their past collabs.

Host Fleur East later asked Swift, “He told us he is constantly asked to perform at people’s weddings. So is he singing at your wedding?”

“Oh, it would be hard to keep him from it, I think,” Swift replied. “That’s the thing, he’s like, ‘I’m always being asked to sing at weddings.’ It’s like, ‘Ed, if there is a stage, you know you’ll be on it.’ He knows what people want, and he wants to give people what they want.”

Swift and Sheeran have been friends and collaborators for over a decade, ever since joining forces for “Everything Has Changed,” a 2012 duet on Swift’s Red album. The Irish singer then served as an opener on her Red stadium tour. They came back together 10 years later for the single, “The Joker and the Queen.” The pair have also made a habit of bringing each other out onstage, with Sheeran joining Swift for a Wembley Stadium performance on her Eras tour.

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Sheeran recently told Call Her Daddy podcast host Alex Cooper that there was a period where they both lived in Nashville and he “spent almost every single day with her for about six months” while touring. But nowadays, they cross paths around four times a year to have “proper sit down, six-hour catch-up” chats. “I think that’s like a really nice way to do it,” he said of maintaining their friendship.

Watch Swift ruefully recount how Sheeran found out about her engagement above.