Liam Payne's girlfriend Kate Cassidy on how she heard about singer's death

Kate Cassidy is opening up about the moment she found out about her late boyfriend Liam Payne's death.

The influencer, 26, addressed her grieving period in detail during a recent episode of Jay Shetty's On Purpose podcast.

Cassidy revealed that the news of his death dawned on her when she was sitting on a couch in the house she and the One Direction alum shared in Florida. She heard it first from one of the singer's friends via a phone call.

"He called me and said, 'Is Liam okay? I heard he fell from a balcony,'" Cassidy recalled, admitting she immediately shut down the possibility as a rumour, especially as the friend didn't mention anything about the fall being fatal.

Cassidy was afraid Payne might have broken a rib from the fall so she started making phone calls.

The infleuncer added how she started to "freak out" when no one answered. She remembers being "a little bit panicky" at the time and calling back the friend to see if he'd heard any updates.

"He was like, 'The only update I've heard is that Liam's... dead.' In that moment, I still didn't believe it to be true. There was just no way, but there was just that one little part of me in the back of my head that was like, why would somebody make this up?"

Cassidy recounted how she started sweating, fidgeting, and pacing around the house as her phone started to get "blown up by my friends, my family, people that I haven't spoken to in years."

Eventually, the first caller reached out again with a confirmation, delivering the news that "Liam's not here anymore" after he fell to his death.

"I still didn't really believe it. I just kept saying, 'No, no, no. Are you sure? He probably just ... broke a bone. He broke a rib. He broke something,'" Cassidy continued on the podcast episode. She said after realising the tragic reality of her boyfriend's fate, she "lost it" and broke down.

Her housekeeper—who had left the house earlier that day—returned shortly to comfort Cassidy.

"She put in the garage code, ran in the house and just literally fell on the ground and just hugged me and just said, 'I am so sorry,'" she recalled, adding that her housekeeper had seen the news when she got home then immediately returned to the place of work.

"It was just me and her, and she was so comforting and brought me water, brought me tissues."

Cassidy went on say that she'd never lost anyone very close to her before or even attended a funeral before her boyfriend's. "It's just mind-boggling," she reflected.

"When I was trying on my funeral dress, I remember just trying it on, looking in the mirror and I just started bawling. I was like, 'I was supposed to be trying on my wedding dress.' I wasn't supposed to be wearing a black dress. I was supposed to be wearing a white dress, and Liam was supposed to be here with me."

Cassidy and Payne dated for about two years before he died from a balcony fall at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires in October 2024.