Roy Halladay's Wife Said She's 'Very Against' Him Flying in Haunting Video From Just Before Crash
One month before Roy Halladay’s tragic fatal airplane crash, his wife, Brandy, expressed her disapproval of his passion for flying.
In a now-deleted YouTube video posted by ICON Aircraft in October, Brandy didn’t mask her initial apprehension about her husband wanting to buy a plane.
“I didn’t grow up the way Roy did,” she said. “I didn’t grow up with airplanes or a comfort level the way he did with small planes.”
“She fought me the whole way,” Halladay said.
“Hard,” Brandy added. “I fought hard. I was very against it.”
Despite her initial misgivings, she said she traveled with her husband to the training center in St. Petersburg, Florida, to see what he was raving about.
“They said, ‘Oh, you want to go up for a ride?’ And I went up to that plane and I looked over [at him] and I said, ‘I get it, I get it,'” Brandy said. “You forget you’re in a plane.”
The video was removed from ICON’s YouTube page just hours after Halladay’s death was announced.
The former All-Star MLB pitcher was killed Tuesday after his two-seater airplane crashed into the Gulf of Mexico, 10 miles west of St. Petersburg.
Halladay’s father was a corporate pilot for years, which he said began his love of flying.
“I’ve been dreaming about flying since I was a boy,” Halladay, 40, toldSeaplane Magazine last month, “but was only able to become a pilot once I retired from baseball.”
He earned his pilot’s license after retirement from and bought a 2018 ICON A5 plane in October, his being the first one off the production line. The amphibious aircraft can take off and land from water or from a tarmac, according to Popular Mechanics.
According to Player Wives, Halladay and Brandy were childhood friends while growing up Colorado. They lost touch in high school once Brandy’s family relocated, but the two reconnected when she moved back in 1996. Two years later, they were married.
Since retirement, the couple has spent much of their time in Florida raising their two boys, Ryan and Braden, who is currently a pitcher at Calvary Christian High School in Florida, seemingly following in his legendary father’s footsteps.
