In June 2014, Joey was diagnosed with cervical cancer not long after the birth of the couple's daughter Indiana. In 2015, Joey announced that the cancer had returned and spread to her colon. That October, Rory revealed in a blog post that Joey's cancer was terminal, and they were stopping all treatment. On November 9, 2015, Rory announced via his blog THISLIFEILIVE that Joey had entered hospice care. In November 2015, she began receiving in-house, end-of-life hospice palliative care at her family's home in Alexandria, Indiana. In a November 2015 interview with The Tennessean, Joey stated that she was not angry or depressed with God but was disappointed, that after undergoing radical gynecological surgery to eradicate it, the cancer had returned as inoperable and terminal. In the newspaper article, Joey said she hoped to die peacefully in her sleep, to live to see Christmas of 2015 and, if possible, her daughter's second birthday in February 2016, all of which she achieved. Her husband, Rory, has kept a blog of their experience, and the couple maintained a positive attitude and demeanor in her last weeks and months. However, in January 2016, Mr. Feek, in a sad but grateful blog post, titled "When I'm Gone", revealed that, following an emotional talk with Joey, and reflecting that they had been able to spend Christmas and the New Year with their family and friends, said that, as opposed to before when they were still more optimistic, they both had come to terms with and accepted her terminal diagnosis and worsening health (her morphine dose needed to keep the cancer pain under control had quadrupled in the prior four days before the post), and let nature to take its course. She was able to celebrate her daughter Indiana's second birthday and Valentine's Day with her husband Rory and her daughter, and was later able to help make a meal for the three on her bed, though she was now confined to her bed, and was showing the effects of terminal cancer (weight, body mass, and hair loss). In early March, after saying her goodbyes to her family and relatives, she fell into a deep sleep from which she was not expected to recover or awaken, showing signs of organ dysfunction and shutdown due to the cancer, according to her husband Rory and the attending hospice nurse. Rory was able to post a goodbye tribute video, but afterward was at his wife's side as she entered her last few days. He had found a type of closure, because they had said goodbye, her pain levels had been increasing prior to that point, and the couple had reached every milestone that they had realistically set - Christmas and the New Year, Valentine's Day, the Grammys, and Indiana's birthday. Joey died (age 40) with her husband at her side around 2:30 pm on March 4, 2016.
