For one of the first times ever, Luke Bryan opened up about one of the hardest moments of his life. The 49-year-old American Idol judge sat down with Anderson Cooper on CNN’s All There Is podcast recently, where he spoke candidly about his older sister Kelly’s sudden death in 2007.
Eighteen and a half years ago, Kelly traveled to Nashville along with 100 of her brother’s closest friends and family to see him perform at the Grand Ole Opry for the very first time. Just days later, she passed away unexpectedly from Sudden Death Syndrome. The performance ended up being the last time the “Country Girl” singer saw his sister, and the tragedy is something he has rarely discussed publicly. Until now…
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Luke Bryan Opens Up About His Sister's Tragic Death
During the candid and emotional conversation, the "That's My Kind of Night" singer explained why he's stayed mostly silent for nearly two decades, saying his sister's unexpected passing has weighed on him for years.
"I've never really explained what happened to my sister. There's some misinformation out there on the internet, and I think some people kind of like, wonder what happened and think that we've tried to cover it up," he began.
Bryan went on to describe the randomness of the loss, something which doctors struggled to fully explain. "There is a very very small percentage of people that die for no reason in the world," he explained, adding: "It's called sudden death syndrome and that's essentially what they described my sister's death as. She was in her home doing her laundry, and it was like somebody just turned the switch off on her. It was just tragic beyond words."
There Were Many 'Unanswered Questions'
The "Play It Again" singer went on to say that her death unsurprisingly left many "unanswered questions," which the family did their best to get to the bottom of. The family urgently wanted to understand what happened – especially because they worried whether something genetic might affect Kelly's three children.
"We wanted to know, could there be a family history of something that her children might have or may have? Your typical findings of an autopsy of someone 39 would be an aneurysm or an embolism or a blood clot of some kind and everything was inconclusive," Bryan explained.
The details around her final moments left the family with theories rather than answers. "She had a pretty severe orbital bone injury. So whether she fainted or not, I think she may have went into the floor and kind of knocked herself out," he went on. "My nephew was three at the time. And I just think I think if someone could have been there, maybe her chances of surviving would have been a lot better."
The Funeral Brought An Unexpected Moment Of Peace
The "Love You, Miss You, Mean It" musician said he felt physically overwhelmed in the days leading up to her funeral. But despite his grief, he recalled how something shifted the moment he walked into the room to say goodbye to her...
"The morning of her funeral, I mean Anderson, I don't know how to vocalize what I was feeling. I mean the nausea. I did not want to go in the funeral home and see my sister. I was just really… not processing this well," he recalled. "And the fact that I knew at 5:00 p.m. I was going to walk in that funeral home and have to deal with this – it was just really I just wasn't doing well with it."
"When I saw her," he remembered, "it was like something, it was almost like a pressure valve released. And, and I just feel like between… I don't I can't explain it. It was truly like she let – she set me free in that room. And you know, my mother did not have that experience and I think I was the only one in the family that had that experience."
Luke And His Wife Adopted His Sister's Children
As the conversation shifted from grief to the family that grew from tragedy, Bryan called his sister the "best mother you could ever dream of" to her three children — Jordan, Kris, and Til. Their father, Kelly's husband Ben Lee Cheshire, died in 2014 at age 46 after a heart attack. Following his death, Bryan and his wife Caroline Boyer stepped in to raise their three children and brought them into their family alongside their own sons, Thomas and Tatum.
"It's just what you do as family. And I guess you go into like a tribe instinct and you, you do what you can to kind of make it," he said, in reference to the decision to formally adopt and raise her three children. He then noted how heartbreaking it was to watch Til grieve both parents at such a young age…
"Watching him come into our home and have to grieve the loss of his dad was really, really tough. And to watch my wife step up and do the work that she had to do was one of the most impressive things I've ever seen," he remembered.
Over time, their home found a new rhythm, which Bryan says has been unexpectedly beautiful. He said: "My oldest Bo and Til, I mean, it is all brotherly. It looks and smells just like two brothers complaining and fighting and wrestling and giving each other a hard time. But with Tate, my 15-year-old and Til, they have a really special bond, and I can't imagine a household where Til would have never grown up in it."
The "One Margarita" musician concluded: "It's just been a blessing and a silver lining to have him and to watch the girls go through life and become mothers and… and get through life daily has been pretty inspiring too. I'm really proud of them."
