Telli Swift on building empire, collaborating with Deontay Wilder

July 09, 2024

Telli Swift and her fiancé, boxer Deontay Wilder, are going a mile a minute with their professional endeavors, but for the longtime couple, it’s the time spent together they cherish the most.

“We always try to make time to have to ourselves because we just feel it’s so important in our relationship, and we’re both career-driven people, and the time that we have to ourselves usually happens after he fights,” Swift recently told The Post of her and Wilder, who met in 2015.

Though Swift savors her personal time with Wilder, 37, and their family — they share eight children between them — the 35-year-old entrepreneur and philanthropist has also dedicated much attention to her ever-growing empire.

Modeling since age 3, Swift has explored a multitude of avenues throughout her career, including a starring role on the E! reality series, “WAGS Atlanta.”

“One of the casting directors contacted us. They had been trying to get me to do reality TV for a long time and I just felt like it was never the right time,” Swift said of the series she filmed with Wilder, which ran for one season in early 2018.

Prior to joining the show, however, Swift was concerned about the potential liberties production might take with her on-screen portrayal.

“I didn’t want to do it in a sense where it could, I guess deteriorate who I was inside, in comparison to what they want to showcase on TV,” she said.

Although the filming itself was a “crazy experience,” Swift had “so much fun,” noting she was “accurately portrayed to an extent.”

“I feel like the whole discussion with marriage kind of wasn’t what it was like in our reality. Obviously, that was something we discussed prior to the show, but it was more so a constant conversation that was constantly brought up on the show and I almost seem like I was nagging about getting married,” Swift said.

“It’s not something that was discussed on an everyday basis, that to me was kind of like, OK, I look like I’m just nagging about marriage and this is all I want when I was, in fact, content with our relationship already, and knowing that it was going to come, sooner or later.”

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The cameras were rolling in 2017 when Wilder sweetly popped the question to Swift at the pair’s gender reveal party for their then-baby-to-be. And while Swift is open to a reality TV return on her terms, she has other ventures keeping her busy, namely the “Telli Talks” podcast on Spotify and Dash radio.

Originally pitched to Swift as a WAGs-centric show, she countered with the idea of opening the floor to guests to discuss their careers, relationships and everything in between.

“They wanted to have me talk to other WAGs about relationships and their journey and that wasn’t what I wanted to do cause I didn’t want to have the stigma or the stereotype of what it is like to be with an athlete, and I didn’t want to have just one conversation throughout the topic of my podcast,” Swift said.

“I kind of pitched the idea of me talking to business professionals, trying to pick their brain on how they got started and where they are today.”

Beyond the mic, Swift continues to grow her Boxing Wags Association, a not-for-profit organization “that aims to raise funds and deliver them into the hands of service providers and non-profits who support children and families in a variety of way,” per her website. The organization has helped to raise awareness and funds for children with autism, breast cancer, and Spina Bifida.

As for what’s next, Swift hopes to expand the D’Telli brand, which boasts a unisex fragrance in collaboration with Wilder.

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“[Deontay and I] couldn’t be more opposite as people. We have similar interests, but when it comes to certain things, we’re completely opposite,” Swift remarked of the creative process. “I like obviously more girly, citrus, sweet scents, and he’s more musky, woody, manly scent, and to try to combine the two and like how it smelt combined was a process within itself.”

For Swift and Wilder, it was about finding the happy medium. Swift hopes D’Telli serves as a springboard for future fragrances.

“When we discussed it, we wanted to initially do one original unisex, genderless fragrance and then have a collection of the unisex fragrances but eventually, we want to kind of separate the ‘D’ for the men’s collection and the ‘Telli’ for the women’s collection,” she said. “So eventually, we’re going to have a line of unisex fragrances and then a line for men and women, hopefully in the near future — fingers crossed!”

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