Taylor Swift Fan Who Met the Singer Reveals Her ‘Biggest Takeaway’ from the Interaction (Exclusive)

Meredith WilshereSun, May 10, 2026 at 8:28 AM UTC

0

Olivia Levin and Taylor Swift in 2017
Credit: Courtesy of Olivia Levin -

Olivia Levin met Taylor Swift at 17, just three years after starting her fan page, Swifties for Eternity

Levin says the experience was surreal and that Swift exceeded her expectations as both a person and an idol

Levin’s new book explores the Swiftie fandom, including her personal experiences and the global community it has created

Olivia Levin was enchanted to meet Taylor Swift.

Levin, 26, has run a fan page called Swifities for Eternity dedicated to the pop star since she was 14. However, just three years into running her Tumblr and Instagram accounts, she was invited to meet the award-winning singer herself.

Levin tells PEOPLE that, when she was 17, she was invited to one of Swift's Secret Sessions. During the singer's 1989, Reputation and Lover eras, she famously hosted exclusive album listening parties with hand-picked fans — and in 2017, Levin was one of the lucky ones invited to Swift's Rhode Island house for the day.

Looking back nearly a decade later, Levin says the experience was "so surreal."

Taylor Swift at the Eras Tour
Credit: Kevin Winter/TAS24/Getty

"I was like a 17-year-old small-town, Connecticut girl getting invited to meet my idol," she shares. "I was definitely starstruck, but she exceeded every expectation I had, and so did her family."

At the intimate event, the select group of fans got to talk to Swift, take photos and listen to the Reputation album before its release. In between songs, the "All Too Well" singer would explain what each one meant to her.

"Some people are like, 'Don't meet your heroes. They won't live up to what you think they are.' That totally was not true for me, in my case," Levin emphasizes.

The main thing she noticed from the visit was that Swift is "just a normal girl."

"That's really it. Before you meet celebrities when you're 17 years old and you see them in the media all the time, it's easy to forget that they're just people," she says. "My biggest takeaway that day, and ever since then, I'm like, 'Wow, she's just a person.' "

Olivia Levin
Credit: Courtesy of Olivia Levin

— sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Levin has continued to follow Swift's career in the years since and shares that she has gone to "at least 10 shows total since the 1989 tour."

Advertisement

"My parents used to travel with me to shows, and they took me to my first Nashville show on the 1989 tour. For the Reputation tour, I was flying by myself when I was 17 and going to different cities across the country and meeting up with other fans and going to shows," Levin says.

While Swift has liked a few of Levin's posts over the years, the full-time content creator notes that they haven't crossed paths again — but have come close.

"For my work, I always end up in the same place, and people would be like, 'Oh my God, Taylor's upstairs,' I'll be at a place in Los Angeles for work, and she's up there," Levin says.

She shares that the closest she came to meeting Swift again was at the 2025 NFL AFC Championship game.

"I was at the Chiefs game in Kansas City, and I was downstairs in the room when the game was about to end, and the Chiefs pulled through at the last second as they always do, and they won," she remembers. "Everyone was cheering, and I looked up, and she was five feet in front of me with Donna Kelce. Then people were crowding around her and asking for pictures."

"In my mind, if I ever meet her again, I want it to be super organic and through mutuals and stuff like that," she continues. "I don't really want to add to the crowd of people who go up to her and ask for pictures."

Ultimately, she just wants to "respect her space and her privacy."

"If it's meant to happen, then it'll happen," Levin says.

Levin's new book, The Story of Us: How The Taylor Swift Fandom Changed Our Lives, documents what it means to be a Swiftie, with Levin herself recalling when she met Swift, the magic of the Eras Tour and how the fandom created a worldwide community.

"For the fans that have been around like me or even longer, I want them to be able to take a trip down memory lane and remember all the little things, all the moments that some may have forgotten, and now it's all in one place," Levin says of her book. "I hope that for all of those people, including Taylor, I hope that when everyone reads it, they can feel that same sense of magic that they feel when they think about something like The Eras Tour."

on People

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”