An American couple have become an online sensation after the husband set up a “Taylor Swift jar” to penalise his wife for her constant mentions of the superstar singer.

The swear jar-style idea was revealed in a video posted to Instagram last month by Maryland real estate agent Dana Rice. It has since racked up nearly 10 million views.

The video shows her husband, Dan Rice, creating the jar, which he labels: “Any mention of T. Swift and you owe $0.25.”

As he sticky tapes his label to the jar, he warns Rice that dropping the name of Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, will also attract a 25-cent fine.

“No! He doesn’t count,” Rice can be heard protesting, as she tells him the celebrity couple had both appeared on Saturday Night Live that weekend.

“That’s a quarter (25 cents),” her husband says.

On Monday, Rice told People magazine she had “no idea” that her husband “was crafting such a prop”, as he stood in front of her.

“To be honest, he was annoying me because I was trying to get some things done,” she said.

The clip shows the Rices in their kitchen, when he asks her for a marker pen. Thinking he was “doing something for my niece’s birthday”, Rice pulls out her phone to film her husband.

“When I came around the corner, not only did he have the jar, but he had rolls of quarters. So he set me up with the rolls of quarters and the jar,” she said.

“You can see the smirk on his face”, she says of the video.

Rice told People she wasn’t a long-time Swift fan. But the record-breaking Eras Tour has changed that.

“I started seeing reports and things from other people and other industries talking about her from a business perspective – from a force-of-nature perspective when she first started this tour,” she said.

“It just sort of arrived in my consciousness and became something that I wanted to look into because I’m a business person and I wanted to learn.”

As Rice learned more about Swift, she became a firm fan.

“There is so much Taylor Swift ‘lore’ that once you start, you can’t seem to stop consuming it,” she said.

She’s also keen on Swift’s romance with footballer Kelce. He was spotted in the crowd at the singer’s Eras Tour in Argentina last Saturday night, before the two shared a sweet kiss backstage after her performance.

“Who isn’t drawn to [a] fairytale with [a] Hollywood ending?” Rice said.

And she has firm plans for the money in her Taylor Swift jar.

“Since he supplied me with all the quarters, I absolutely have put all the quarters in there,” Rice said.

“I will be using them for Taylor Swift tickets in the future – that is for sure. I have to, right?”