‘Vibrant’ 26-year-old chef dies during Tennessee marathon, family says. ‘Best of us’
A 26-year-old man remembered as a “vibrant and talented chef” collapsed while running a marathon in Tennessee and died, according to his loved ones and news outlets.
Joey Fecci was racing in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Running series in Nashville on April 27 when he experienced a medical emergency, organizers told McClatchy News.
He received “urgent medical attention” onsite and later died at a hospital, race officials said.
In a statement obtained by The Tennessean, Fecci’s family announced the young chef’s passing.
“The world lost a literal culinary genius that was going to create and inspire so much more, and I lost my best friend,” his brother Nick Fecci said in a statement to WSMV.
His brother recalled Joey Fecci’s “burning passion for cooking from an early age” and his desire to open his own restaurant one day.
His family and those in the culinary community from Chicago to Nashville are mourning the loss of the “vibrant and talented chef.”
“I keep telling myself not to just keep asking why, but it’s hard,” his mentor, Joe Flamm, shared in a tribute on social media. “I’m grateful I hired a (19-year-old) kid from New York sight unseen (because) he sent me an email. I’m grateful he spent two years sharing a kitchen with me.”
For three years, Fecci worked at Yolan, an Italian restaurant inside The Joseph hotel in Nashville, where he went from sous chef to chef de cuisine, the restaurant said.
“We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of our former team member,” a spokesperson for The Joseph told McClatchy News in an emailed statement. “Chef Joey Fecci was an integral part of the Yolan team from pre-opening in July 2020 to January 2024.”
His mentor there, Tony Mantuano, told FSR Magazine that Fecci was a “storyteller in the kitchen.”
Nick Fecci told WSMV he last saw his brother at mile 18 of the marathon. A video shared with the outlet shows Joey Fecci smiling and giving high fives to his supporters.
Then, they got “the phone call that would destroy our lives forever,” Nick Fecci told the outlet.
The chef’s longtime girlfriend said she would never fully understand what happened, while friends called his passing a nightmare.
“I will never fill this void in my soul,” his girlfriend wrote in an Instagram post. “You are and were my protector. We understood every piece of each other and loved each other so deeply.”
A man who called Fecci his brother and best friend said “Joey Fecci was the best of us.”
“His commitment, his dedication to his craft, to his family, to his friends, and to all those that crossed his path is something the world rarely gets to witness,” he wrote on Instagram.
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