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Igor Vovkovinskiy, who was declared as the tallest man in the United States by Guinness World Records, died last week at the age of 38.
Vovkovinskiy's family confirmed he died of heart disease last Friday (August 20) at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
Igor's mother, Svetlana Vovkovinskiy, who works as an ICU nurse at the Mayo Clinic, initially announced her son's death in a post shared on Facebook.
Vovkovinskiy, a native of Ukraine, initially came to the Mayo Clinic as a child seeking treatment in 1989 after a tumor pressing against his pituitary gland caused it to secrete abnormal levels of growth hormone.
Igor, who ended up staying in Rochester, grew to an astounding 7-foot-8.33 inches, making him the tallest man in the United States, according to Guinness World Records.
His brother, Oleh Ladan, told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis that Igor was a celebrity when he arrived in America due to his size and the tail end of the Cold War during the late 1980s, but Igor "would have rather lived a normal life than be known.
The 7-foot-8.33 man had previously appeared on The Dr. Oz Show, where he was declared by a Guinness World Records adjudicator as the America's tallest living person in 2010, and was called out by former President Barack Obama during a 2009 campaign rally while wearing a "World's Biggest Obama Supporter" t-shirt.
In 2012, Vovkovinskiy gathered donations to pay an estimated $16,000 cost for specially made shoes that didn't cause him crippling pain, as he didn't own ones that fit his size 26, 10E feet.
Igor received thousands of donations, doubling his initial goal, and Reebok provided the custom shoes for free.