In November 2025, Samantha Busch sat down on the Certified Oversharer podcast and said something she had never told anyone. She still had embryos frozen from her and Kyle’s IVF journey, and she couldn’t let them go. “What if you passed?” she asked Kyle. “I would have to have another kid to be connected to you and name that child after you.” Kyle laughed it off.

But nobody could have known then just how hard those words would hit just months later. Now, with Kyle gone at 41 after a sudden battle with sepsis, the resurfaced clip has stopped NASCAR fans in their tracks – because it sends chills down one’s spine, sure, but also because it speaks to something the Busch family understood better than almost anyone in the sport. Life is fragile, family is everything, and the fight to build one is worth every penny.

That fight is exactly what Kyle and Samantha turned into one of NASCAR’s most powerful humanitarian missions. And NASCAR veteran Rick Mast wants to make sure that no one forgets that legacy.

How Samantha and Kyle Busch changed hundreds of lives quietly

“With IVF and, you know, when they went through it, when they were going through it and they saw how expensive it was, what a hardship it was, they’re like, man, we got to help people, you know, help people that are suffering through that. So, they started that deal [Bundle of Joy]…The stuff that those guys have done for so many people and that’s what makes it so fri—- tough. It’s taken away from us,” Mast reflected on the latest episode of Mast Cast. 

For years, while Kyle was dominating racetracks across the country, he and Samantha were going home to a struggle that no amount of success could solve. The couple spent years trying to conceive naturally before turning to IVF, a process that, too, wasn’t easy.

They endured multiple failed IVF cycles, several egg retrievals, a failed gestational carrier cycle, and the crushing pain of miscarriage. Samantha, who later channeled that pain into her 2021 book Fighting Infertility: Finding My Inner Warrior Through Trying to Conceive, IVF, and Miscarriage, has often spoken about the emotional and physical toll those years took, especially the agonizing question of why it seemed so effortless for everyone around them while they kept hitting walls.

“There was a night, and we were laying in bed together, and I’m just kind of like why, God, why me? Why is it so hard?” Samantha once recalled. “Why is everybody around us getting pregnant and we can’t?”

It wasn’t until 2014, after years of treatments, that they finally got the news they had been praying for. On May 18, 2015, their son Brexton was born. Soon enough, in September of the same year, the two started the foundation upon realizing that there were several others like them and far less privileged. After all, these procedures can cost anywhere from $15,000 to $20,000 each cycle.

“Understanding that bill, I mean it’s around $20,000 and there’s no guarantee for a baby, that’s just for a chance,” Samantha Busch explained the reason behind the organization. “We just knew that God placed it on our heart that we needed to start the Bundle of Joy Fund.”

The foundation assists by providing funds for one round of IVF, up to $20,000 per pair. And every child born through the grant-supported IVF program is honored on the Bundle of Joy website with a newborn photo alongside their birth date.

Samantha further openly criticized the lack of fertility insurance for first responders, teachers, veterans, and military families months before Kyle’s death. In an Instagram post, she noted, “Infertility is literally classified as a disease, yet our military, most of our first responders, public school teachers do not have coverage.”

Eventually, her activism reached the national stage. Samantha went to a White House event in October 2025 related to the Trump administration’s plan to lower the cost of IVF medications by collaborating with the pharmaceutical company EMD Serono. Samantha actively collaborated with legislators and activists to promote more affordable and accessible fertility.

So, what began as a very personal undertaking swiftly developed into one of NASCAR’s most significant humanitarian endeavors. Till now, Bundle of Joy has awarded 178 grants totaling over $2.3 million and assisted in the birth of 111 children through IVF.

And after Kyle’s death, fans found a way to honor that mission directly. Through the organization’s One Cause donation page, donations poured into the Bundle of Joy Fund right away. $18.08 (and other variations of the same) was donated by hundreds of supporters. It was an homage to Busch’s famous No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet and No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota. It was a small gesture that carried enormous emotional meaning.

Because in the end, Rick Mast said it best. “There are human beings alive today, born and alive because of Kyle and Samantha Busch’s work with the IVF deal.”