Alan Osmond, the oldest performing member of the musical group The Osmonds, died Monday April 20, 2026 at approximately 8:30 p.m.
He was 76. His wife Suzanne and their eight sons were at his bedside. The family’s statement did not disclose a cause of death.
He had been living with multiple sclerosis for nearly four decades, diagnosed in 1987 after noticing he could no longer raise his right hand while performing on stage.
Donny Osmond, 68, posted a black-and-white photograph of himself as a young child with Alan’s arm around him.
“Even back then, you can see that he had his arm around me, watching over me,” Donny wrote. “That’s who he was. My protector. My guide. The one who quietly carried so much responsibility so the rest of us could shine. Alan was our leader in every sense of the word. Thank you for always being there for me.”
Who Was Alan Osmond?
Alan Osmond was born June 22, 1949 in Ogden, Utah, the third of nine children born to George and Olive Osmond. The two oldest brothers, Virl and Tom, were hearing impaired and could not sing.
Alan was the oldest of the seven who could, and it was his responsibility that shaped the entire trajectory of the family’s career.
The story of how they started is one of the more unusual origin stories in American pop music.
Alan, Wayne, Merrill and Jay, the four oldest performing brothers, began singing as a barbershop quartet in 1958 specifically to raise money to buy hearing aids for Virl and Tom. Alan was nine years old.
They entered competitions, sang at Disneyland, performed wherever they could get an audience. “It was given to us for a purpose,” Alan said of his musical ability, “and when you get a gift, it’s expected that you use it properly.”
Their big break came on The Andy Williams Show, the popular variety program where the Osmond Brothers became regular guests from 1962 to 1969.
They proved so popular with audiences that they became fixtures of the show, and it was there that a younger brother named Donny joined them, still a child, with the kind of youthful charisma that changed everything.
As Deadline described it, Donny did for the Osmonds what Michael Jackson did for his brothers.
Before long they were international stars, teen idols, and one of the most commercially successful acts of the early 1970s.
What Was Merrill?
Alan was the group’s primary songwriter alongside brother Merrill, and the songs they wrote together defined the Osmonds’ catalog.
“One Bad Apple” reached number one in 1971. “Crazy Horses” from 1972 was harder and stranger than anything the group’s bubblegum reputation suggested, a psychedelic rock track that drew critical attention and demonstrated that Alan, as writer and producer, was willing to take the group somewhere unexpected.
“Love Me for a Reason,” “Yo-Yo,” “Let Me In,” these were all products of Alan’s work behind the scenes as much as in front of the microphone.
He was also the guitarist and, by virtually every account from surviving family members, the person who held the operational structure of the group together.
In the mid-to-late 1970s the group shifted. Donny and Marie became the public face of the Osmonds through their weekly variety series, which ran from 1976 to 1979.
Alan remained, as he always had been, the one working behind the camera and the curtain, leader, producer, arranger. In 1980 he and Merrill founded the Stadium of Fire in Provo, Utah, an annual Fourth of July event that has grown into one of the largest Independence Day celebrations in the country.
The Diagnosis
In 1987, Alan was on stage when he discovered he could not raise his right hand. The diagnosis was multiple sclerosis. He was 37 years old.
MS is a chronic autoimmune disease of the nervous system that impacts the brain and spinal cord and can progressively limit mobility.
The diagnosis ended his performing career, he retired from regular appearances with the Osmond Brothers and from most stage work, but it did not end his public life.
He drew on a mantra his mother Olive had used: “I may have MS, but MS does not have me.” He adopted it as his own. “I trusted my Heavenly Father,” he said.
“You have to have opposition in life, this was my test.” His wife Suzanne framed it similarly, “We decided to keep that eternal perspective. This is not forever.”
His son David Osmond was also diagnosed with MS in 2005. Alan turned his experience with the disease into advocacy work.
He helped create the Children’s Miracle Network Telethon, which has raised over $2 billion for children’s hospitals, and launched the One Heart Foundation to support orphaned children.
He received the Dorothy Corwin Spirit of Life Award from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society in 2000. In his later years he was seen in a motorized wheelchair at family events, still smiling, still present.
How Many Osmonds Are Left?
Alan Osmond is survived by his wife Suzanne, they were married 51 years, and their eight sons. Michael, Nathan, Doug, David, Scott, Jon, Alex and Tyler.
He is also survived by 30 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, and by his siblings Merrill, Jay, Donny, Marie and Jimmy.
His brother Wayne, the second-oldest of the original performing Osmonds, died on January 1, 2025 at the age of 73.
Two of the four original Osmond Brothers who first sang as a barbershop quartet in 1958, and who first appeared on The Andy Williams Show in 1962, have now died within sixteen months of each other.
Merrill Osmond, 72, reflected on his brother’s legacy on social media after the death. Donny and Marie, the two Osmonds who became the most publicly visible members of the family over the following decades, built their careers on a foundation that Alan helped construct.
Donny has maintained a long solo career across music, television and Las Vegas stage work. Marie, 66, had a major solo music career, became a long-running television host, and teamed with Donny on a Las Vegas residency that ran from 2008 to 2019. Jimmy Osmond, 63, also had a solo career, particularly in the United Kingdom.
None of those careers would have existed in the form they took without Alan Osmond doing what Donny described, carrying the responsibility quietly so the rest of them could shine.
