Despite his party-themed country hits, Luke Bryan and his family have endured multiple tragedies.
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One was the sudden death of his sister, Kelly, in 2007. The two were close, and she had supported Luke early in his career. She even bought more than 120 tickets on her personal credit card so family and friends could see him perform at the Grand Ole Opry in 2007.
She was only 39 years old and appeared to be in perfect health. Even after several autopsies, doctors were unable to determine the cause of death. This tragedy was followed by another in 2013, when Kelly's husband Ben Lee Cheshire also died unexpectedly of a heart attack. As a result, Luke and his wife, Caroline, adopted their three children.
Until recently, Luke hadn't shared many details about Kelly's death, despite fans' ongoing speculation. That changed when he spoke to Anderson Cooper for CNN's All There Is podcast earlier this week.
Luke Bryan Said Multiple Autopsies Were Performed
Luke admitted to Cooper that he's never fully shared what happened to Kelly and noted the misinformation about her death online.
Despite multiple autopsies, coroners failed to determine why Kelly died.
"Obviously, we wanted to know what had happened, because there were just so many unanswered questions," Bryan said.
He added, "Your typical findings of someone 39 would be an aneurysm or an embolism or a blood clot of some kind, and everything was inconclusive. 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."
The Real Cause Is Even More Mysterious
Bryan went on to explain that the cause of Kelly's death is even more perplexing.
"There is a very, very small percentage of people that die for no reason in the world," explained Luke. "It's called sudden death syndrome. That's essentially what they described my sister's death as."
Healthline explains it as "a term for a series of cardiac syndromes that cause sudden cardiac arrest and possibly death."
Recalls Luke, "She was in her home doing her laundry and ... it was like, you know, somebody just turned the switch off on her."
Tragedy has touched Luke's family before; Luke's brother Chris died in a car accident in 1996. In 2013, he dedicated the song "Drink A Beer," written by Chris Stapleton and Jim Beavers, to his siblings at the CMA Awards.
"She was everything in our lives," Luke said of Kelly in the interview. "She was a mother of three children, and she was, I mean, the best mother you could ever dream of."
