Luke Bryan spoke out about the “misinformation” that has circulated about the sudden death of his sister, Kelly.
During the Wednesday, Oct. 29 episode of the CNN Podcast All There Is with Anderson Cooper, the country star reflected on his sister’s “tragic” death at the age of 39 in 2007.
Luke, now 49, told host Anderson Cooper that he “never really explained” what happened to his sister.
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“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.
Luke then noted that there is a “very very small percentage of people that die for no reason in the world,” which explains what happened to his sister.
“It’s called sudden death syndrome and that’s essentially what they they described my sister’s death as,” he said.
Luke recalled that Kelly was doing laundry and it was like “somebody just turned the switch off on her.”
“It was just tragic beyond words,” he said.
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After her death, Luke and his family were left with so many “unanswered questions.”
“We wanted to know, could there be a family history of something that her children might have or may have?” he wondered. “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 noted 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, adding: “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.”
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Luke described his sister as “everything in our 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 also told Cooper, 58, that the last time he saw Kelly was during a trip to Nashville for his 2007 Grand Ole Opry performance, where he claims she bought 120 tickets to the show for family and friends on her personal credit card.
“I never could have imagined that our last photo would have been taken in the lobby of the Grand Ole Opry right after I had done… my first performance,” he said.
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Kelly’s widower, Ben Cheshire, died of a heart attack in 2014, and Luke and his wife Caroline Bryan decided to take in the couple‘s three children: teenage son Til and adult daughters Jordan and Kris. Luke and Caroline have two sons: Thomas “Bo” Boyer, 17, and Tatum “Tate” Christopher, 15.