Taylor Swift went viral Sunday for a sweet moment in the stands at a Kansas City Chiefs game.

“That’s my husband!” she screamed, pointing to her million-dollar ring, as she cheered Travis Kelce’s first touchdown score of the season.

“Gotta make my girl proud,” Kelce said Wednesday in response on his “New Heights” podcast.

He and his brother Jason demonstrated how the clip became an instant meme, reading aloud a handful of the thousands of posts social media users made about celebrating their own spouses. 

“My wife after I killed a spider in our house,” one read.

Another: “Me when my husband finds everything at the grocery store without calling me.” 

Humorous, sure, but that’s the pinnacle of a healthy marriage: Not a pair of people bickering or undercutting one another, but serving as one another’s hype man (and woman).

Swift is showcasing marriage as a partnership where spouses are cheerleaders for each other, first and foremost.

The cultural implications are great —  and they come just in time.

Marriage is in crisis, and it’s because young women are less and less interested in it. 

According to the University of Michigan’s long-running Monitoring the Future survey, 80% of high-school seniors in 1993 said they expected to marry someday — but by 2023, that figure had fallen to 67%. 

And almost all of the decline came from a lack of interest among girls: 83% of them expected to marry in 1993, but just 61% in 2023. 

What’s behind the change? Consider the entertainment young girls and teens were raised on in generations past, and the media diet they’re fed now.

Once, Disney tales of girls being rescued by princes and living happily ever after were standard fare for children, while romantic comedies dominated for teens and young adults. 

In the 2000s, the tone shifted dramatically in an era of female empowerment, and hopes for future happiness became divorced from romantic aspirations. 

Movies like “Moana” and “Frozen” told young girls they didn’t need a man at the end of the story, and shows like “Girls” and “Sex in the City” convinced young women they’d be stronger and happier as free agents. 

Taylor Swift occupies a uniquely powerful cultural role.

Her ability to sell out stadiums and drive conversation, unlike almost any other celebrity in the country, makes her this era’s Ultimate Influencer. 

The “Swift Effect” is measurable and significant — and soon, it could be coming for marriage itself.

When Swift urged her followers to register to vote in 2023, Vote.org reported a 1,226% increase in participation in the next hour; more than 35,000 new registrations were recorded that day. 

Her Eras Tour moved so much money through local economies that the Federal Reserve took notice and tallied it.

Worldwide, Swift’s influence can be measured not just in streams or album sales, but in economic output: Her six Eras Tour concerts in Singapore, local economists found, added 0.2 percentage points to its quarterly GDP.

When she appeared at a Chiefs-Jets game early in her relationship with Kelce, viewership among teenage girls jumped 53% compared to the season’s previous Sunday Night Football games. 

When Kelce played in the following Super Bowl, 58.8 million female viewers tuned in — the largest female audience in the game’s history.

Swift doesn’t simply reflect the culture surrounding young women; she has repeatedly demonstrated an uncanny ability to direct their attention and dictate their behavior.

And as a married woman, that influence could sell a generation on the idea that marriage is empowering and uplifting, joyful and fun.

Swift has a way of making everything she does look sexy and cool — and marriage could sure use that kind of makeover. 

For decades, popular culture has been steadily stripping marriage of its glamor.

The husband has been depicted as a bumbling idiot at best, and the wedding became an antiquated institution — not a day a girl could spend her entire life dreaming about.

The independent single woman became the cultural signal of an enlightened woman, the aspirational ideal.

And our society has suffered the rampant loneliness and crashing birth rates that change has brought.

Now the most influential woman in the world is standing on the sidelines, pointing delightedly at her wedding ring and screaming, “That’s my husband!”

Taylor Swift can’t reverse America’s marriage decline by herself.

But if culture helped downgrade marriage in the eyes of young women, culture can help make it appealing again.

If anyone has the power to make millions of young women look at marriage and think, “I want that,” it’s Taylor Swift.

Bethany Mandel writes and podcasts at The Mom Wars.