On Southern Charm, Austen Kroll has opened up about the tragic loss of his sister, Kyle, in 1994. During Season 11, he let viewers into a personal moment when he memorialized his sister with a new tattoo.
In Episode 8, Austen visited a tattoo parlor with his younger sister, Katie, who was born after Kyle passed away. “Katie and I have been talking about sibling tattoos for a long time,” Austen explained to producers.
Austen showed off his new tattoo, which pays tribute to both his sisters, reads 1984 on one line and 1996 underneath.
Katie explained the meaning behind the dates to the tattoo artist: “It’s my birth year, and then our sister’s birth year.”
Austen opened up to producers on why he and Katie decided to get the tattoo now. “My sister Kyle passed away around 30 years ago at this point,” he shared. “And we just like wanted to commemorate our sister.”
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He admitted that getting the tattoo was no easy task for him, and it might not have happened without Katie by his side.
“My pain threshold is…very low,” he confessed to producers. “I don’t like needles. Katie is definitely the braver of us. I don’t know what you want me to say—I’m a big old wuss.”
But as Austen and Katie admired their new ink, Austen remarked, “It’s a really dope tattoo. It’s super dope.”
How did Austen Kroll’s sister Kyle pass away?
Austen first opened up about his family’s tragedy in Southern Charm Season 4, when he revealed that his older sister Kyle fell off a cliff during a family hike when she was 9 years old. Austen was 7 years old during the 1994 accident. The coroner told the Herald-Journal at the time that Kyle was killed instantly when she fell about 150 to 200 feet.
Austen called the accident “surreal” on the show. “I didn’t understand death at that time in my life,” he recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to the hospital, she scraped her knee and we’re gonna pick her back up.’” He later added, “It wasn’t so, and it took me a while to realize that, and it was the worst day of my life.”
Austen Kroll opens up about the deep bond with his sister Katie
Austen’s younger sister, Katie, has popped up on Southern Charm over the seasons, sometimes even to give him advice on his love life. Their sibling bond was shown in a new light during the Jan. 21 episode.
“You know, Katie wouldn’t be here without Kyle’s death,” Austen said. “And that is a blessing that our family could never say otherwise about, right?”
He later joked, “Now I have my angel sister, and my devil sister with me.”
Austen admitted during a 2018 interview with The Daily Dish that “people do wonder why my little sister is so young,” which first prompted him to open up about Kyle’s death, and Katie’s birth, during Southern Charm Season 4.
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“So all that I wanted was to make sure that I had the opportunity to talk about it and to have it portrayed in the right light,” he shared. “It’s like I could talk a little bit about how our family was kind of broken there for a little bit. And then enter Katie, and we finally became the whole family again. It’s just an interesting look at my family and I wanted to make sure it was told in the right way…and I think that it was.”
Don’t miss Shep Rose teasing his reunion plans for Austen and Craig Conover in an exclusive interview with The Daily Dish.
