Gabby Logan previously opened up about the moment she found out about the tragic sudden death of her teenage brother Daniel in 1992.
At the time, Gabby – who lost her father Terry this week – was on a gap year from her studies. After returning from the gym, the then 19 year old received a call from her mother who informed her of the horrific news of his death.
Daniel was aged just 15 at the time of his death.
Gabby Logan on moment she found out about her brother’s death
The shocking news left Gabby’s head “utterly scrambled”. In her autobiography The Last Half, Gabby recalled that she “couldn’t hear what Mum was saying”, adding: “She was sobbing too loudly – or maybe that was me.”
Daniel collapsed in the garden while playing football with his brother Jordan and their father Terry. Before going over to him, Terry believed it was a prank. “Daniel didn’t turn when Dad approached him in the garden. So Dad rolled him over, and saw his eyes were vacant, his pulse gone, his body limp,” Gabby continued.
He had just signed for Leeds United, who had just won the old First Division. “He was so fit, so strong, never ill, there were no signs at all. I couldn’t get my head around the idea that his heart had failed him.”
A postmortem examination revealed that he had a disease called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It makes the heart muscle abnormally thick, which makes it harder for it to pump blood around the body. It can sometimes be referred to as sudden death syndrome.
Gabby later said that, after falling over in the garden, he “basically died on the spot”. “I didn’t know young people could die that way,” Gabby told BBC Wales Live back in 2022.
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Gabby’s grief
Speaking on Georgie and Ben Ainslie’s podcast Performance People podcast in March 2025, Gabby explained that the tragedy led her world to collapse around her.
“I was running from my grief, probably, and then by the end of my first year at university, so just around the time of his first anniversary, I had some first year exams and it all kind of came crashing down,” she said.
“I’d stopped sleeping properly. I felt very wobbly, I just kind of lost my balance and I went to see a doctor and he gave me some sleeping tablets and I thought, that’s not what I need. Even I knew that’s not the answer to what was going on, it was much deeper than that, it was the plaster and my dad had had a lot of problems with sleeping tablets. He said: ‘Don’t take those, that’s not a good route.'”
Eventually, she tried counselling. The incident was “like a sledgehammer”, she said.
“It’s like a sledgehammer coming down and sending everybody off in different directions, because it’s such a catastrophic thing to happen, and no warning — and everybody responds differently.”
And, being the eldest of four children, she took it upon herself to do as much as she could for the other members of the family.
Gabby Logan on how brother Daniel’s death made her ‘fearless’
In her book, Gabby admitted Daniel’s death on May 25, 1992 “really did change everything” for her.
“While I’d always been an independent and determined child, Daniel’s death made me fearless. I wasn’t worried about failing or looking a fool, because, well – what could hurt me as much as his death had?” she said.
Meanwhile, speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs previously, Gabby said: “As the eldest child, I think I assumed quite a lot of responsibility, I went and picked up his death certificate, for example.”
On the 33rd anniversary of his death last year, she also shared a tribute: “It’s 33 years. So much has happened. So many huge landmarks passed. I will always acknowledge Daniel’s wonderful life. But there is a hole that is never filled. A gap that always needs navigating and that has been the challenge for all of us.
“A beautiful, painful and brilliant challenge. And that is life. Daniel Aiden Yorath 25.7.76 – 25.5.92.”
Since Daniel’s passing, Gabby and her family founded the Daniel Yorath Appeal. It raises funds to help, treat and detect hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.
‘He is reunited with Daniel’
Posting a tribute to her dad Terry overnight (January 8), Gabby said that she feels like Daniel and his dad are now reunited. She shared that he was due to be discharged from hospital today. But added: “But he is reunited with Daniel and that will feel like home.”
Gabby also shared that losing Daniel had “defined the second half” of her father’s life.
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