Taylor Swift’s wedding day on Friday was marred by the tragic death of her teacher turned security guard Kirk Schwabe aged 69. His family confirmed to The Telegraph he had died following a battle with metastatic kidney cancer.

On Thursday, his daughter Sarah Gordon revealed that her father had been moved to hospice care after his health "declined rapidly". Alongside a picture of her dad with Swift and a sales award for her 2006 album, Ms Gordon wrote: "Over the past several weeks, his health has declined rapidly and he has now been moved to hospice care. If you know my dad, you know he has poured his heart into everything he’s done. He has always loved teaching. He loves his students."

Mr Schwabe was a police officer in Chicago before he became a criminal justice educator, which is how he met the singer.

He taught Swift criminal justice at Hendersonville High School in Nashville from 2004-06, while she was a teenager in school. He later switched careers once more to become her security guard.

Prior to his death, he expressed his delight that Swift was marrying NFL star Travis Kelce. "I do trust Taylor’s judgement. She knows what’s best,” he said in an interview with The Telegraph on July 2.

In the same conversation, he also recalled telling the star her life was about to change as her career took off.

"I told her, you’re a superstar. This is not fun and games no more. You are it. Everything keeps going up and up and up, and the sky’s the limit for you," he said.

The pop star asked him to be her personal security guard in 2009 as her music career began to take off, and he retired from teaching to work for the Grammy award-winning singer.

During his time working for the star, he took his duties very seriously and confided his worries about the job in an interview.

"If anything happens, I’m the guy. We got 400-500 people in here, and I got some extra security guards, but I don’t know a lot of these guys who got hired, I don’t know what their qualifications are."

He eventually resigned from his role on her team due to burnout, but remained fond of the singer.

Swift was so fond of Mr Schwabe that she paid homage to him with her cameo in the 2010 film Valentine's Day. Her character has a teacher named Mr Schwabe, who was named after him.