As makeup artist Joey Diaz nervously watched the Chiefs’ AFC Championship game against the Buffalo Bills last year — the final matchup before the powerhouse NFL team would reach the 2025 Super Bowl — he wanted them to win just as much as the next diehard football fan in the city.

But his reason, he admits, may have been a bit biased.

“I’m over here like, ‘Please let the Chiefs win so we can go to the Super Bowl and glam,’ ” the 30-year-old makeup artist from Kansas City tells PEOPLE.

The Chiefs did win that game, and two weeks later, Diaz found himself on a whirlwind trip from Kansas City to New Orleans — sleeping overnight in the airport and getting dressed in the airport bathroom for the opportunity to glam the wives of the team’s coaches for the big game.

Diaz is, of course, a Chiefs fan, too. Born in New York, he moved to Kansas City, and he’s lived in the city ever since.

Growing up, he tells PEOPLE, he always had a passion for sketching faces and for the beauty world. He can remember getting his hands on Allure’s Best of Beauty edition every year, flipping through the glossy pages and getting a feel for the latest and greatest products.

At 19, he walked into an Ulta to pick up some mascara: “I was like, you know what? I can get into this,” he says. “It’s easy.”

As it turned out, makeup artistry wasn’t as easy as he initially thought, but that didn’t discourage Diaz, who started practicing on his friends. He picked up a few more products, and he continued to develop his skills, offering free glam sessions to anyone who would let him. Diaz began working in makeup sales for Anastasia Beverly Hills in Ulta and Sephora up until 2020, when he decided to start his own freelance business.

Still, even as he was offering makeup services for weddings, he worked part-time as a server to pay the bills because, he admits, “makeup is expensive.” That was until two years ago when, he says, it was time to “pull the plug” and commit to makeup full time.

Around that time, he ran into Laura Beth — the hairstylist behind Chief WAG Brittany Mahomes’s stunning locks — and went into networking mode, eventually finding his way to the Artistry salon in Kansas City, known for regularly glamming other Chiefs WAGs.

First, he started with the wives of Chiefs coaches, but slowly his clientele grew as they would introduce him to the wives and girlfriends of the team’s players.

A typical game day starts early. Sometimes they come to his booth at the salon, sometimes he travels to their homes if the WAGs are hosting a private event, but he and his hairstylist companion are usually responsible for the hair and makeup for three to four girls a day.

“We’re just kind of tack teaming it, trying to get everybody out the door by their schedules,” he says. “Everyone’s a little sleepy in the mornings, of course, but it’s kind of their one hour to relax before all of the chaos of going onto the field and the tailgates.”

As for the looks, he says football games are a lot fun because you can “play with color” a bit more than you might for another kind of event makeup. Typically, the WAG will send her outfit idea in a group chat with Diaz so that the game day glam is “easy breezy.”

“You can do sexy looks, sultry looks,” he says. “It’s almost just like creating a fashion costume.”

Even if there is a rush to a regular game day glam session, the Super Bowl was at an entirely different level — from the moment he found out he would be going to the game while watching the AFC championship in a Kansas City bar.

“As soon as we won that game, I ran to the bathroom and booked my flight,” he recounts.

Of course, there were no hotels left in New Orleans just two weeks out from the game, so he was resigned to sleeping in the airport. (“That’s not a great idea,” he laughs. “I had to go to the chiropractor after.”)

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He got to the Chief’s hotel at around 7:30 a.m. on the day of the game, made his way through the intense security surrounding the building, and got to the glam room where the chaos began.

“The room is tiny,” he says, estimating around 700 square feet for 10 makeup artists and 10 hair stylists lined up to start glamming WAGs.

“Think of New York Fashion Week meets a tailgate,” he says. “The nerves are up. Everyone’s getting dressed in their players’ jerseys. And the chaos of makeup artists everywhere, photographers, barbers — you kind of just blink and then open your eyes and it’s over because you’re moving so fast.”

After the glam session was over, he sent his clients with a small touch-up kit, and then he had to get back to the airport to catch his flight home (he says he was sad to miss the game — but a bit less so after it ended in a heartbreaking loss against the Eagles). In total, the trip was just over 24 hours.

After that Super Bowl morning — what he describes as a “turning point” in his career — he now has a regular slot glamming WAGs, including Ana Demmerthe girlfriend of offensive lineman Creed Humphrey. But once their makeup is pristine and they’re on their way to Arrowhead Stadium, he’ll be tuning into the game, too.