Luke Bryan Reveals His Sister’s Cause of Death in Rare Comments

Luke Bryan is sharing the details of sister Kelly Bryan’s death for the first time since her sudden passing in 2007.

The country singer admitted on Tuesday’s episode of CNN’s All There Is with Anderson Cooper podcast that while he “never really explained” what happened to his sister, there was “some misinformation out there on the internet” with people thinking his family tried to “cover it up.”

It was then that the American Idol judge revealed his sister’s cause of death for the first time.

“There is a very, very small percentage of people that die for no reason in the world,” he said. “And 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, and it was just tragic beyond words.”

Luke revealed that it took some time before his sister’s cause of death could be determined. “Obviously, we wanted to know what had happened, because there [were] so [many] unanswered questions,” he explained. “And we wanted to know, could there be a family history of something that her children might have or may have?”

While “typical findings” of an autopsy for someone of Kelly’s age might have shown an “aneurysm or an embolism or a blood clot,” the singer revealed that all of the findings were “inconclusive” when it came to her death.

“She had a pretty severe orbital bone injury,” he revealed. “So whether she fainted or not, I think she may have went into the floor and kind of knocked herself out.”

Luke noted that if someone had been there with his sister, her chances of surviving whatever happened to her might have been “a lot better.”

“She really was everything in our lives,” he continued. “She was a mother of three children, and she was the best mother you could ever dream of. And we all leaned on her for so many things, and it’s hard to really wrap your brain around her being gone.”

Seven years after Kelly died, her husband, Ben Cheshire, died of a heart attack, and Luke and his wife, Caroline Bryan, adopted their three children — Jordan, Kris and Tilde. Luke and Caroline are also parents to sons Thomas “Bo”, 17, and Tatum “Tate”, 15.

“It’s just what you do as family,” he said of adopting his sister’s children. “And I guess you go into a tribe instinct and you do what you can to kind of make it. … But Til it wasn’t necessarily an adoption, more like we were, we had to sign paperwork that he’s our responsibility. And 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.”

Luke said that in such a tragic situation, you have to find “silver linings,” which he’s found in the children’s relationships with one another.

“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,” he said. “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.”

“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,” he said. “I’m really proud of them.”