Luke Bryan Reveals Sister’s Cause Of Death For The Very First Time, Clears Up Years Of “Misinformation”
on Oct 30, 2025
For The First Time, Luke Bryan Opened Up About His Sister’s Sudden Passing
Luke Bryan is setting the record straight about the rumors he’s heard surrounding his sister’s passing.
On Wednesday, October 29, Luke appeared on an episode of the CNN podcast All There Is with Anderson Cooper. During the interview, he opened up about the loss of his sister, Kelly, who died suddenly at home in 2007 at the age of 39.
Luke and his family have never publicly shared what happened to his sister. They’ve managed to keep that part of their lives very private.
Because the family never revealed the details, many people assumed they were keeping the cause of Kelly’s death a secret. However, Luke explained that isn’t the case.
“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,” Luke told Anderson Cooper.
The truth is, there hasn’t been much of an explanation that Luke or his family can give. He went on to say that there is a “very, very small percentage of people that die for no reason in the world,” which is what happened to his sister.
“It’s called sudden death syndrome,” he said. “That’s essentially what they described my sister’s death as. She was in her home doing her laundry and… it was like, you know, somebody just turned the switch off on her.”
“It was just tragic beyond words,” he added.
Naturally, when doctors couldn’t find a specific cause for Kelly’s passing, Luke and his family were left with many “unanswered questions.”
Several autopsies were done to hopefully find some answers. A concern for them was whether it could be something genetic that might affect her children.
“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,” Luke explained.
He confirmed that at the time of her death, Kelly had a “pretty severe” orbital bone injury.
“So whether she fainted or not … she may have went into the floor and kind of knocked herself out,” he said.
He added, “I just think if someone could have been there, maybe, maybe her chances of surviving would have been… they would have been a lot better.”
Luke went on to describe the impact that Kelly had on everyone’s lives.
“She was a mother of three children and she was, I mean, the best mother you could ever dream of,” he said. “And we all leaned on her for so many things and it’s hard to really wrap your brain around her being gone.”
Luke And His Wife, Caroline, Went On To Raise Kelly’s Three Children
After Kelly’s passing, she left behind her husband, Ben Cheshire, and their three children.
Sadly, in 2014, Ben also passed away. Following his death, Luke and his wife, Caroline, stepped in to raise their two nieces, Jordan and Kris, and nephew, Til.
In a 2017 interview with GMA, Caroline said that the decision to take them in was something that she and Luke didn’t even debate.
“We never thought twice about it,” Caroline told Robin Roberts. “You know, it was never something that he and I had to sit down and talk about. ‘Should we take this on?’ We just did that.”
You can watch Luke Bryan’s interview with Anderson Cooper in the video below.
