They say friends are the family you get to choose, but these childhood buddies discovered they were both after taking a DNA test.
“When we found out we were brothers, we were so excited,” Walter Macfarlane, 74, told InsideEdition.com.
Macfarlane and Alan Robinson, 72, who were born in Hawaii 15 months apart, have been friends for 60 years after meeting on the football team in middle school.
“He was an athlete,” Robinson said. “He was older and he was a very handsome, honest kind of guy, so I looked up to him and respected him.”
Both Macfarlane and Robinson were adopted.
Macfarlane grew up believing his grandmother was his mother, and when he turned 18, he discovered the woman he believed to be his sister was his actual birth mother.
Robinson, who grew up with a different set of parents, said he knew from the very beginning he was adopted.
As a Christmas present several years ago, Robinson said he received a DNA test kit and submitted the results.
Macfarlane did his own DNA test last year with hopes of finding his biological father.
Instead, McFarland discovered he and his best friend shared a birth mother.
“60-something years and we didn’t realize,” Robinson said. “I couldn’t contain myself, the emotions were overwhelming.”
They said their birth mother died more than a decade ago, but are now hopeful their children and grandchildren are ready to begin their lives as one big family.
“I think my adopted parents knew and took that secret to their graves,” Robinson said.
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