From Germany with love, Mahomes Effect compels these Chiefs fans to get married in KC

Some 5,000 miles from Kansas City, Antje Maedebach is a child-care worker and Kenny Rossberg a welder in what she calls “a very small village near Leisnig, which is close to Leipzig, Chemnitz and Dresden, the capital of Saxony” in Germany.

The pastoral setting with more cows around than humans is gorgeous and historic and ever-so-removed from us in a region, country and continent that still largely considers football to be what we call soccer.

No wonder that for much of their lives, Maedebach said, if anyone was talking about the Super Bowl it was about the halftime show. And that to her fleeting glances, anyway, American football appeared “a total mess” too hard to comprehend.

So the NFL didn’t resonate much with Maedebach, 34, and Rossberg, 35, and their friends — until Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs became an irresistible force in their lives.

So much so that Maedebach and Rossberg recently felt compelled to make the pilgrimage to Kansas City and punctuate it by getting married locally.

And, yes, they have tickets to the Chiefs-Dolphins game next week in Frankfurt — where they will see their third NFL game in three countries in a six-week span: They also went to London to see Tennessee-Baltimore because one of their friends is a Ravens fan.

Their story, including that they named their cats Mahomes, Travis (Kelce) and Tyreek (Hill), naturally is very much their own unique tale.

But it’s also a telling anecdotal snapshot of the global force that is Mahomes and why the NFL is intensifying efforts to expand its international presence.

And their tale also reiterates a more localized Mahomes-era reality, one already teeming with three Super Bowl appearances in four years and perhaps enhanced now by the emergence of Taylor Swift on the scene: Three years from Kansas City being a host city for 2026 FIFA World Cup, it reflects a seemingly flourishing place in the consciousness of the broader world.

Still …

“We’re Kansas City: We’re not New York, we’re not L.A. We get it,” said Chase Peeples, a Christian minister and religion professor who officiated their wedding at Cedar Crest Lodge in Pleasanton, Kansas.

As such, he added, we’re “not used to this kind of attention.”

So the thought that somebody who has tickets to see the Chiefs play in Germany would want to come here, too, and get married here is both “mind-boggling” and makes him feel honored for Kansas City.

Those feelings are easy to relate to. Especially when you consider the inauspicious origin of how this dynamic came to be — both in terms of the couple and how far the Chiefs have come in the last decade under coach Andy Reid.

By now, of course, you know the story of the rise of the Chiefs. And for all their adoration of Mahomes, Maedebach wanted to be sure she expressed how much they appreciate the whole team and the spirit led by Reid.

As for the case of Maedebach and Rossberg, they each were too shy to realize they had crushes on each other in school but were friends who blossomed as a couple in 2015.

If not for the pandemic, she said, they would have been married some three years or more ago.

In fact, in 2017 they considered getting married in Hawaii if it felt right when they arrived.

Only to have their luggage get lost for eight days.

“We took it as a sign,” she said in one of a series of email exchanges from Germany.

The improbable sign that came to say go to Kansas City started with a simple development:

The TV company RAN partnered with the NFL over the last 10 years to provide more coverage. RAN’s shows and moderators, she said, “made football accessible,” and their passion helped build up a sense of community over America’s game in Germany.

Even so … When Rossberg would watch Super Bowls with friends, Maedebach still couldn’t understand football’s appeal.

“Back then I didn’t get the rules,” she said. “For me it seemed like they (were) just running/crashing against each other.”

Until Jan. 12, 2019, that is, when Mahomes led the Chiefs to a 31-13 victory over the Colts in an AFC Divisional Round playoff win.

Among the other highlights of the first postseason game of Mahomes’ career was a sidearm pass to Travis Kelce that evoked a “wow” from NBC’s Al Michaels.

With the TV on in the background as she was tending to other things, the enthusiasm of the announcers “about this new quarterback and (how) he is doing magic” drew her to watch in a way she never before had.

“Since I didn’t know anything about the sport, I didn’t know where to look at first,” she said. “But with every down, I learned something new. … There was another level of thrill about every pass. There was this tension — is the ball going to be received(?)

“I couldn’t take my eyes off the ball.”

Many people come to feel this way about Mahomes, of course.

Not just here or around the country, as it happens, but all over the world and certainly in Germany:

With well over a million people seeking tickets online, the game with the Dolphins sold out the 48,500-seat stadium in 15 minutes in no small part because of the allure of Mahomes. One example: Daniel Jensen, co-host of a Chiefs podcast called “Das Kingdom,” co-wrote a German book about Mahomes that Forbes reported had sold almost 10,000 copies as of January.

As she considered the increasing popularity of the Chiefs in Germany, Maedebach believes many others “just feel and think the same as I do:

Mahomes and the whole team is fun to watch. Because of the great passes and the willingness to never give up. They are on fire, and this fire is spreading (in a good way).”

Praising Reid and the stadium atmosphere — “the loudest” — even from afar, she said, “I would assume every fan wants to go to Arrowhead at least once in a lifetime or watch the Chiefs live in Germany.”

In her case, it became both. Because Mahomes proved not only the guiding light into her grasp of the game — making her realize that it “is like chess on the field” — but also a beacon to come to Kansas City.

Since Rossberg had been at work the day of that 2019 Colts game, she told him all about Mahomes the next day and, presto, soon told him she had a new favorite sport. They started rooting for the Chiefs and tried to watch them play as often as they could.

Next thing you know, they booked flights to come to a game and get married here in 2020 but had to cancel because of COVID.

Delayed as it was, the plan stayed intact until its fruition in September.

They also considered getting married in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, where they’d enjoyed traveling before, and attaching that to a trip here.

But through online searches, she found Cedar Crest, which she considered beautiful and offers wedding and elopement packages.

“So we thought it would be great to see the Kansas City Chiefs and get

married in Kansas,” she wrote, playfully adding, “Yes we know that Kansas City is in Missouri but you can’t have everything.”

When Matt Cunningham, one of the innkeepers at the family business, got her email from Germany, he figured it was from somebody on a U.S. base coming home to get married or some other such scenario.

Through 24 years, they’ve had some visitors from outside the country, but …

“That was definitely our first international elopement,” Cunningham said.

For his part, Peeples estimates he’s performed some 500 wedding ceremonies but couldn’t recall officiating any international ones before. And he was deeply struck when he asked what drove their interest in the Chiefs and coming here and they responded “Mahomes” in unison.

“They just felt like this was something they hadn’t seen before, and much more exciting,” he said. “I looked at them and thought, ‘Well, I can identify with that.’ ”

The wedding was great, of course, and Maedebach can’t thank the Cunninghams and Peeples enough.

And the game-day experience for a 41-10 victory over the Chicago Bears was unforgettable, too.

“Who would have thought that Taylor Swift would be at the same game (?),” Maedebach wrote, adding that the tailgating and smells and atmosphere was “breathtaking” and “beyond awesome!”

When I asked her if any sort of special feeling came over her upon entering the stadium and seeing the stands and field, she wrote, “Just that feeling of ultimate happiness that we finally made it and this urge to suck everything in and to be in this moment with every bit of our heart and soul.”

By the time it was all over, she said, the experience and the way they were treated by Kansas Citians was deeply moving.

“We daydreamed about moving to Kansas City — at least from September till February,” she wrote.

As it happens, they’ll see the next Chiefs “home game” — as the game against the Dolphins is designated — by staying in Germany.

Thanks to some good fortune: While she was in the online queue with some 500,000 in front of her, her sister was in position 5032.

“When she told me the number, I thought she forgot some digits,” Maedebach said. “But no — she managed to get tickets. I was so happy that I cried.”

All of which is a charming and vivid example of the Mahomes effect. It’s a phenomenon likely to expand exponentially as of Nov. 5 and again when the Chiefs likely return next year to Germany and their fascinating new frontier of fans.

“It’s just incredible,” Cunningham said, “the kind of reach he has.”