Megan Rapinoe Shares Brother Died After Battle With Alcoholism

Megan Rapinoe Shares Brother Michael Died After Battle With Alcoholism

Megan Rapinoe is keeping her late brother close to her heart.

The former U.S. Women's National Soccer Team athlete shared that her sibling Michael died in 2025 after struggling with drinking.

"I went home last year after my older brother Michael died," Megan told former teammate Abby Wambach on her A Touch More: The Beautiful Game podcast June 11. "It was a long battle with alcoholism, and it was sad."

The Olympic gold medalist said that mourning her half-brother Michael—one of Megan's five siblings including her brother Brian, fraternal twin sister Rachael and half-sister Jenny, in addition to another sister—made her take a rare pause in her busy work schedule, something she confessed was the cost of playing professional soccer before her retirement in 2023.

As Megan put it, "I just was thinking so much while I was home, ‘Wow, I can’t even remember the last time I was home for this long, not for a holiday or, you know, a wedding or something.’”

As such, her brother's passing also caused the podcaster to recognize what she and Michael had in common.

"I see the obsession and compulsion and addiction in myself in him too," Megan noted. "And it's like you're searching for something."

And Megan's empathy for her family member's struggles has also extended to her other brother Brian, a recovering addict who shared he was completing a 12-month rehabilitative reentry program to finish his prison sentence during a joint 2019 interview with Megan for ESPN.

"I don't take on that blame anymore," Megan explained in an interview with People in 2020, "but it's given me an incredible amount of empathy for people caught up in the opioid crisis."

Photo by Soobum Im/NWSL via Getty Images

"For whatever reason, the drugs sunk their teeth into Brian," Megan said. "He didn't need federal prison; he needed drug rehab."

For her part, Abby related to the difficult revelation of losing a loved one during the June reunion.

"We both now have brothers that have died," Abby added, speaking of her brother Peter G. Wambach Jr. who died in 2023 following the complications of a heart attack. "That is crazy."

To learn more about celebrities who have been open about addiction and sobriety, keep reading...

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