“I ran into him in the grocery store [and] the last thing I said to him was, ‘Okay, love you more, man,’ which was our thing,” Noah said. “You never know when the last time you’re going to see someone is, so [our family] always [says] how you feel right before you say goodbye, because it could be the last thing. Then that was it.”
A grimly useful family rule, as it turns out.
The brothers had love, but also distance
Noah starred with Matt and their six siblings on Discovery Channel’s Alaskan Bush People, which aired from 2014 to 2022. The series followed the Brown family’s unconventional life and made the siblings familiar faces to viewers who watched their relationships play out over years.
Noah said that before Matt’s death, the two “were good,” but he also acknowledged there had been “a distance” between them.
“In the later years, I realized it was best to just kind of let him do his own thing,” Noah said. “The stress of a large family gets to some people, and it’s just one of those things. Just let’s let him live his life.”
That kind of space can be an act of respect, though grief has a way of making every old choice feel like evidence. Noah admitted he still wishes there had been more time.
“I do wish, though, that there could have been more, but in the end, that’s kind of always how it is,” he said. “You always wish that you could have done more, no matter how much it was that you were doing.”
Bear Brown confirmed Matt’s death after the search
Matt, 43, had gone missing on May 27. His brother Bear Brown confirmed on May 30 that Matt had been found dead in the Okanogan River in Washington.
Bear, 38, said in a TikTok video that Noah had helped recover Matt’s body from the river. He also said that an official cause of death was still pending, while sharing his belief that Matt had died by suicide.
“He struggled for a long time, as I’ve mentioned,” Bear said. “I was so worried he was gonna end up OD’d or something like that. I didn’t think that he would hurt himself. It does look as though the injury is self-inflicted.”
Bear said he chose to address the news publicly despite how painful it was because he wanted fans to hear it directly from the family.
“I wanted you guys to hear it from the family first,” he said.
A public loss with private grief
For viewers who followed the Browns across nearly a decade of television, Matt’s death is not just another celebrity headline. The family’s story was built around closeness, conflict and survival, which means this loss arrives with a public history attached to a very private kind of sorrow.
Noah’s comments do not smooth over the complicated parts. They make room for them: love, distance, regret and the small mercy of having said something honest before goodbye became permanent.
If you or someone you know needs support, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also text HOME to 741741 for the Crisis Text Line.
