Tragic Details About Property Brothers' Drew & Jonathan Scott

Drew and Jonathan Scott may have found fame and riches with their hit HGTV show "Property Brothers," but their journey to the top was no walk in the park. Along the way, the twin brothers from Canada faced professional and personal adversities that could have thrown them off the track. Before launching their show, Jonathan and Drew were on different career paths that didn't work out, leaving each under deep financial strain.

It all worked out for the best, though. It was thanks to the difficult situation they found themselves in that the brothers decided to join forces and jump head-first into real estate, culminating in the lucrative career we know them for. But they also hit bumps in their personal lives. After going through a heartbreaking divorce that deeply affected his mental health, Jonathan found love again with Zooey Deschanel, showing he learned valuable lessons from it.

Drew, on the other hand, struggled with infertility as his wife's health issues proved an obstacle in their attempts to conceive. Their IVF journey was long and confusing, but it had a happy ending. Drew and Lisa Phan welcomed a son and a daughter, achieving their long dream of having a family together. While Jonathan has no kids of his own, he was a proud fur daddy to two dogs, which sadly died within a year and a few months of each other. Jonathan and Drew have a lot to be grateful for, but they've also faced quite a bit of challenges.

Jonathan and Drew Scott may be worth $100 million each, but there was a time when their bank accounts painted a different picture. Before making it big on HGTV, they were just trying to make ends meet however they could. For his part, Jonathan, dreaming of being the next David Copperfield, poured all his resources into a magic career. "I had built all these props, and I had this trailer custom-made, and I'd leased a truck — I was dead set on making it as a success," he told People in 2017.

But money wasn't all that Jonathan poured into it. He also deposited all his trust into the wrong person, who stole all of his expensive equipment. "My Spidey senses were tingling, but working with this person seemed like a good opportunity and so I overlooked that," he told Forbes in 2017. Jonathan felt he had no choice but to file for bankruptcy, a decision he regrets to this day. His situation threw him into depression. 

Drew's financial woes came from his pursuit of acting. "I went to Vancouver to pursue that, and I was taking acting courses, networking and doing all the things I had to do to make sure that I was being seen," he told People. But he racked up $100,000 in debt along the way. Amid their financial problems, Drew and Jonathan focused on real estate. "Now we've put due diligence in and strengthened our financial situation," Jonathan said.

Jonathan Scott's first marriage ended in just two years. In 2007, he tied the knot with Kelsy Ully, an airline crew scheduler he had been dating for more than four years. "There was sort of a rush going into it," he told People in March 2017. "She wanted to get married on 07/07/07." Things started to fall apart early on. They began to grow apart shortly after they left Canada for Las Vegas, where he pursued his career as a magician and she waited tables while aspiring to become a model.

Jonathan and Ully tried to work on their marriage in couples therapy, but it made no difference. "The pain ended up outlasting the marriage," he wrote in "It Takes Two: Our Story," the memoir he co-authored with Drew Scott (via Country Living). The divorce wasn't easy for him to work through. "I spent six-and-a-half years with someone, and it didn't work. Anyone in a long-term relationship knows how hard that is," he told People in August 2017.

His mental health was particularly affected. "The split isn't something I dwell on anymore, but for one too-long, too-dark period of my life, that's practically all I did," he wrote. Thankfully, he had his twin brother on his side. Drew took it upon himself to ensure Jonathan didn't become isolated. "I said, 'Nope, you are not sitting at home. Get your butt out here. You're coming with me, and we're hanging out,'" he recalled to People.

Even before Drew Scott and Linda Phan married in 2018, they knew they wanted to have a family. When they moved to Los Angeles the previous year and set out to design their new home, the couple already imagined little ones running around. "I wanted to make sure this house can function for kids, too," Scott told People in 2017. He was even ready to make personal sacrifices to make it happen. "I'm willing to give up my craft room for the nursery," he added.

But the journey proved harder than they had anticipated. After trying to conceive to no avail, Scott and Phan sought the expertise of a fertility endocrinologist who helped them navigate Phan's Graves' disease, an autoimmune condition that affects the thyroid gland. Together, they decided to try IUI and IVF. "I think for us, the whole thing was we were so lost. We were trying for years, we wanted to have kids for years and with no success," Scott told People in 2021.

After two years of treatment, the couple shared they were expecting a baby in December 2021. Their son was born in May 2022. "Our lives are forever changed," Scott captioned an Instagram post. "Welcome to the world Parker James." Phan and Scott expanded their family in June 2022, when they gave Parker a little sister. "Our family of 3 has become 4! Piper Rae, I love you with all my heart," Scott celebrated on Instagram. 

Jonathan and Drew Scott don't hide that they're attached at the hip, but "Property Brothers" fans know they're just as close with their older brother, J.D. Scott. For more than a year, they must have felt powerless watching J.D. try to get to the bottom of a mysterious health condition that baffled doctors. Between 2018 and 2019, J.D. experienced strange symptoms if the temperature rose above 70 degrees. "I would suddenly feel like my skin is on fire, I'd start passing out, and I'd be out of commission for sometimes days," he explained in a July 2019 Instagram video.

Doctors initially considered a lupus diagnosis but discarded the possibility after several months of tests. The next hypothesis was a brain aneurysm. After a series of MRIs, they determined J.D. had suffered not one but two. Not everyone agreed, though. At that point, J.D. still hadn't received a conclusive diagnosis, but a doctor suggested it could be more than one ailment. "He said to me, 'It is possible that you're not suffering from one thing, that it's a few things that are culminating into these symptoms,'" he said.

That turned out to be partially true. Shortly after sharing the video, J.D. learned he had a gastrointestinal infection and possibly fluoroquinolone toxicity from antibiotics. But the biggest culprit was likely acute mercury poisoning. "I am so grateful to finally have some real answers and direction," he wrote in a 2019 Facebook post.

Before Jonathan Scott brought Zooey Deschanel's kids into his life, he considered himself a father to two dogs. "That's my kids, Gracie and Stewie," Jonathan said in an OK! magazine video, after Drew Scott correctly guessed that his favorite animals were Chihuahuas and Yorkshire terriers. He suffered a big blow when the youngest of the two died in November 2022. "Said goodbye to my sweet Stewie today. He brought joy to my life for over 13 years and that will continue in all our fond memories," he mourned on Instagram. 

Jonathan would experience a similar pain a little over a year later. After adopting Gracie in the mid-2000s, he had to say his final goodbye to his beloved black Chihuahua in February 2024. "I'm heartbroken. My sweet Gracie passed away last night. What a wonderful 17 years you gave me. You're always in my heart," he captioned an Instagram post featuring photos of the two together over the years. 

Just like Jonathan embraced her kids as his own, his fiancee did the same with his fur babies. "Our sweet Gracie was the most wonderful pup. We are so sad to say goodbye," Deschanel commented on the post. Jonathan's pooches were even social media-famous, having an Instagram account dedicated to them. It's unclear if Jonathan ran it himself or if it was a fan-based page. Regardless, it shows that Gracie and Stewie had a big impact on Jonathan's life and beyond.