On the eve of Super Bowl 53, Ontario native Matt Baxter was standing outside The St. Regis Atlanta hotel. The 39-year-old had just finished eating dinner at Chops Lobster Bar down the street and was waiting to board a party bus with a group of friends toward their next destination.
As Baxter waited for the rest of his group, “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star Cynthia Bailey tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to take a picture. He didn’t recognize the reality star, and wasn’t exactly sure why she wanted a photo with him.
Unbeknownst to him, she thought he was New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.
“She didn’t say anything about Tom Brady, so I thought I just knew her from Atlanta,” Baxter told Page Six. “I went to dinner with a lot of friends who are professional athletes and celebrities, so I thought she may be asking them for a picture, too, but, no.”
Baxter says Bailey, 51, also told him they have a “mutual friend,” and so he played along, but was still a bit confused. The interaction took about 30 seconds.
The next day, Baxter attended the Super Bowl, where the Patriots beat the Los Angeles Rams, and the Canadian businessman, who owns Scholars Education Centre, took a photo with the real Patriots quarterback on the field.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BtcfXWhnoT4/“I’m friends with the Kraft family, so I go to a lot of events, and [Brady and I] have met a few times,” Baxter said of his relationship with Robert Kraft, who owns the Patriots. He added of Brady, “He’s a great guy. He’s one of the most genuine, down-to-earth people you will ever meet.”
After the game ended, Baxter’s social media mentions began to blow up when Bailey shared the photo she took with her 2.2 million Instagram followers. In the post, she admitted that she thought Baxter was actually Brady, 41, and laughed off the selfie mishap.
“Confession. I ran into this guy last night in the lobby of the St. Regis. I asked for a picture because I thought he was @tombrady,” Bailey wrote. “I really did. I did interviews on the carpets last night saying how cool it was to bump into Tom Brady.”
Baxter clarified that he never pretended to be Brady, because Bailey made no mention of Brady at the time, but the father of two was still flattered by the mixup.
“I thought, ‘Well, my wife is more beautiful than Gisele [Bündchen], but I guess that’s a compliment,” Baxter says, adding that he has gotten comments that he looks like the quarterback “once or twice” before.
Baxter, like Brady, is tall, standing around 6-foot-5. He played both college football and baseball at the University of Western Ontario, but said, “Baseball is more my sport.”
Additional reporting by McKinley Hart