Sports TV icon Gabby Logan was just 19 years old when she lost her brother. He – Daniel Yorath – was 15, and having a kickabout with their dad Terry in the back garden when his heart suddenly stopped.
Gabby’s world “came crashing down” as she struggled with the aftermath of his death. Her dad warned her against using sleeping pills to cope. She felt “utterly scrambled”. Still, it made her “fearless”, she said.
“I wasn’t worried about failing or looking a fool, because, well – what could hurt me as much as his death had?” she said.
Gabby Logan’s heartbreaking promise she made at teenage brother’s funeral
In a recent interview with the Times, Welsh sports journalist and radio presenter Gabby Logan- who fronts the BBC’s women’s Euros coverage – recalls seeing her brother Daniel for the last time.
She was 19 at the time.
Their father had spun out of control following Daniel’s sudden death – he suffered with depression and drank to numb the pain. Eventually, his marriage to Gabby’s mother fell apart.
And there she was, in the funeral parlour, looking at her 15-year-old brother. She made him a promise: “I am going to do everything I can to make your life count.”
“Yes,” she says now. “To live my life for two people.” And she has.
The tragedy drove her to achieve. She developed a competitive streak, and learned the hard way – via a stint on Strictly Come Dancing – that “sometimes not everyone likes you”.
She’s glad she’s married to a ‘normal bloke’
In the wake of her brother’s death, Gabby had to pull herself together. As the eldest of four children, she took it upon herself to do as much as she could for the other members of the family.
Nevertheless, the disruption it caused to her relationship with her father led to an unhealthy pattern when choosing men in a dating context.
“For a few years I sought the company of not very appropriate, older men,” she wrote in her memoir, The First Half. “I was probably wanting to mend something because our family was quite broken, because of my brother dying.
“I felt I could create something like a family, a happy place. Those were the relationships I was pursuing. But a bit of guidance from a therapist helped me recognise those patterns were not healthy.”
Nowadays, she’s grateful to have married a “normal bloke who isn’t an addict”. Kenny Logan is her “number one”, and that doesn’t look like it’s about to change.
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