A Decade Later: How Christina Grimmie's Family Keeps Her Legacy Alive

Ten years can feel like yesterday or a lifetime ago, depending on what you’re remembering. For the Grimmie family, June 10 marks a date when time split into before and after—when a 22-year-old YouTube sensation with a gift for music and an even bigger gift for connecting with people was killed during a meet-and-greet in Orlando, Florida.

But this anniversary isn’t about dwelling in that tragedy. Instead, Christina Grimmie’s loved ones are choosing to remember the person behind the keyboard, the funny kid from New Jersey who started posting videos at 15 because her best friend Lauren Longo believed in her talent. That same girl who played piano by ear despite taking lessons, who covered Miley Cyrus and made millions feel less alone through a bedroom camera and raw vocals.

Albert Grimmie, Christina’s father, puts it plainly: We want Christina to be remembered for the person and artist she was, not just the tragedy. That’s the framework the family has built around her memory—not erasure of what happened, but refusal to let it be the only story. Her parents Tina (who passed in 2018) and Albert, along with her brother Marcus, founded the Christina Grimmie Foundation in 2016 to support families impacted by gun violence. It’s a way of transforming unbearable loss into something that protects others.

Albert describes Christina as a“pioneer”—someone who reached the world from her bedroom, who inspired people to cut their hair like hers, to pick up keyboards and try to sing the way she did. That ripple effect of her influence didn’t end on that June day. It lives in the videos she left behind, in the people who credit her with sparking their own musical journeys, in a foundation working to prevent other families from knowing this kind of pain.

Longo captures the heart of what endures: her talent and the way she treated people. Not the headlines. Not the statistics. The humanity. Albert still watches old videos of Christina online and remembers how funny she was. That’s the choice the family is making—to keep her funny, her talented, her generous self in circulation, while building something meaningful from their grief. It’s how you honor someone ten years later: you refuse to let the worst moment define the whole story.