Secret tragedy and joy for Barry Hall and Lauren Brant
AFL legend Barry Hall and his partner Lauren Brant have revealed they secretly tied the knot as they dealt with an emotional family tragedy.
The pair wed in February as Hall's sister was fighting her second battle with bowel cancer.
Hall and former Hi-5 star Brant have been together for five years and share two children, four-year-old Miller and two-year-old Houston.
The couple have opened up about the effect Sandra's passing has had on them to raise awareness around the importance of getting tested early for bowel cancer.
“There’s one reason alone why we want to share our story with everyone and that is because cancer is real and it can happen to anyone,” Brant told A Current Affair.
“We never thought it would happen to our family, we never thought it would happen to Sandra, we never thought it would affect us to the stage of actually losing her and the thing is she could maybe be here with us if she detected it early enough.”
Brant and Sandra's relationship was beyond simply being sisters-in-law.
Brant's older brother Tyron and Sandra were high school sweethearts and went on to marry and have two children.
But in 2019, the family was completely dumbfounded when Sandra was diagnosed with bowel cancer.
“The stomach pains that she had been feeling for over a year, that is what it was the whole time,” Brant said.
“But no one had tested her for bowel cancer, it was everything else under the sun.”
Sandra was cancer-free in March 2020 but it returned only a few months later.
In February, Brant asked Sandra to be her maid of honour, before Hall proposed to his partner in his sister's hospital room.
That same day, the couple – along with Sandra and close family members – headed straight to sunflower field, where they exchanged vows in a very low-key ceremony.
Hall was extremely emotional talking about his sister, breaking down in tears during the interview.
“She (Sandra) was too weak to even walk and Tyron had to carry her and stuff,” Hall said.
“There was no fuss, no frills. It was all about love.”
Two weeks after the impromptu wedding, Sandra passed away from bowel cancer.
But just before she passed, Brant was able to let her sister-in-law know that she and Hall were expecting a baby boy in October.
Tyron revealed it was Sandra who encouraged Hall and Brant to share her story to raise awareness of the early detection of bowel cancer.
“Sandy probably 72 hours before she passed away, we were just lying in bed together and she said to me, ‘When I am gone, at the appropriate time, could you speak to Lauren and Barry and ask them if they could share the story with the public to raise awareness’,” Tyron said.
“Sandra had bowel cancer, they don’t test for that under the age of 50 but you can go to the chemist and you can buy a bowel cancer test and you can test yourself for it,” Brant added.
Hall and Brant met on the reality show I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! in 2015.