Toni Braxton ‘should be dead’ after near-widowmaker heart attack

Grammy Award winner Toni Braxton has revealed she nearly had a heart attack. Photo / Getty Images

The seven-time Grammy Award winner revealed she had a worrying health scare two years after her sister died.

Toni Braxton nearly had a heart attack and needed to have a stint fitted.

The 56-year-old singer had the major health scare two years after her sister Traci’s death from oesophageal cancer in 2022 aged 50 - and didn’t want to tell her family for fear of worrying them.

On the series premiere of The Braxtons, her sister Trina, 49, said: “In true Toni fashion, [she] asked the family to come to dinner, and she had something to tell us, but this time when she told us that she wanted to talk, the setting of her tone was very melancholy, and I’m really afraid, because Toni had this health scare recently.”

“Toni has always been [reclusive] when it comes to her feelings. She’s never really been this person who just wants everybody to know what’s going on with her in her life, and especially with her health.”

Toni said: “I know I have to tell the girls about a health scare, which makes me feel some kind of way, because the last health scare we heard was Traci…

“On the brink of Traci stuff, I don’t want to get them riled up, [thinking], ‘Oh, is Toni okay?’ So I don’t even want to tell them. Maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t know.”

Toni nearly had a widowmaker heart attack and if doctors hadn’t “caught it”, she wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.

It happens when a blood clot or plaque completely blocks the left anterior descending (LAD) artery, one of the arteries around the heart.

She shared: “If I had a heart attack, I wouldn’t have survived. I wouldn’t be here right now.”

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Struggling to hold back tears, she continued: “They told me, ‘Your sister was watching over you because they [are] right, you should be dead today. You should not be alive’.”

In a confessional, she said: “I had to have a stint put in my heart, which was extremely scary.”

“That’s a very scary procedure itself, but when my doctor told me I might not ever be able to do a tour again - okay? I heard it before, but this was different. They say you may never be able to do another tour because you could have a heart attack.”

Ever since, Toni is “scared every day” that she could have a heart attack.

She admitted: “It’s crazy anxiety. I just think about it all the time… It’s really messed up that I’m scared every day. If I have a heart attack, I won’t survive. I can’t handle even that feeling.”