‘It was just tragic beyond words’

Luke Bryan is getting candid on his sister Kelly Bryan’s sudden death in 2007 at the age of 39.

“I’ve never really explained what happened to my sister,” the country superstar, 49, shared while on Tuesday’s episode of the CNN podcast, “All There Is with Anderson Cooper.”

“There’s some misinformation out there on the internet, and I think some people kind of wonder what happened and think that we’ve tried to cover it up.”

For the first time since her death, Luke revealed what caused Kelly’s passing at such a young age.

“But there is a very, very small percentage of people that die for no reason in the world,” he continued. “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 Anderson, it was like, you know, somebody just turned the switch off on her. And it was just tragic beyond words.”

Cooper, 58, asked Luke if it took his family “awhile” to receive the diagnosis.

“Yeah, yeah, obviously,” the “American Idol” judge replied.

“We wanted to know what had happened because there was so much, there was just so much unanswered questions. And we wanted to know, could there be a family history of something that her children might have or may have?”

Luke noted that the “typical findings of an autopsy” for someone in their late 30s would be “an aneurysm or an embolism or a blood clot.”

But for Kelly, “everything was inconclusive.”

“She had a pretty severe, like, orbital bone injury,” he continued. “So whether she fainted or not, I think she may have went into the floor and kind of knocked herself out. My nephew was 3 at the time.”

Luke believes that if “someone could have been there, maybe her chances of surviving” could have “been a lot better.”

“She really was everything in our lives,” the singer gushed. “She was a mother of three children and she was, I mean, 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.”

Luke said he still doesn’t “know how to vocalize what [he] was feeling” the day of her funeral.

“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. 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,” he recounted. “And we get in a car and it’s the sensation you get in the car and that this has got to happen.”

The CMA winner called himself a “pretty spiritual guy” who is “pretty grounded in my belief in Christ and Christianity.”

But when Luke walked into the room, it was the “first time” in his life where he felt a “spirit of another world take away my burden.”

“When I saw her, it was like something, it was almost like a pressure valve released,” he recalled. “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. My mother did not have that experience and I think I was the only one in the family that had that experience.”

Seven years after Kelly died, her husband, Ben Cheshire, passed away from a heart attack.

Luke immediately adopted their three kids, Jordan, Kris and Tilde, without a second thought.

“It’s just what you do as family,” he told Cooper. “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 and his wife, Caroline Boyer, share sons Thomas “Bo,” 17, and Tatum “Tate,” 15.

Luke shared that despite the tragedies, “you have to find silver linings” and “appreciate” them.

“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. And, I mean, 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.”

In 2021, Luke expressed to People that “we get to live with Kelly through her children, and we see so many things in her children that remind us of her.”

He added, “As a family, we really try to do good to just remember the beauty of the people we lost and not dwell on the fact that they’re not in our lives daily.”

Luke also shared how exciting the current phase of life is for his sons.

“As they grow older, it’s easier to let them tag along,” he told People at the time. “They become little men and they become functional little microcosms of me. Their personalities are really different … They become your buddies. I mean, they’re still your kids, you still have to do the discipline and you still have to teach them the right and wrongs of life, but they really morph into your buddies.”

“And I’m certainly in the golden years. I mean, it’s like the sweet spot of being a dad right now and you can let them tag along.”