Friends Since Middle School Learn That They Are Brothers — After 60 Years

TV Station KHON2 in Hawaii reported that two friends of 60 years found out just in time for Christmas that they are actually biological brothers. Alan Robinson and Walter Macfarlane learned they were related through a DNA comparison on Ancestry.com after knowing each other since 6th grade.

From playing football together in school to playing cribbage together in retirement, Robinson and Macfarlane have been best friends through the years. While Robinson was adopted, Macfarlane never knew his father. Robinson also had a younger brother who died when he was young, so he had no other family, which prompted him to start searching on Ancestry.com.

Meanwhile, Macfarlane was searching for his father with the help of his family and eventually turned to the same website.

The moment of revelation came when Macfarlane and his daughter, Cindy Macfarlane-Flores, were reviewing DNA matches on Ancestry.com and saw at the top of the list, sharing identical X chromosomes, the username Robi737. Robinson used to fly 737s for Aloha Airlines and everything clicked into place.

He called up Robinson and they figured out that they shared a birth mother. Now the best friends and brothers plan to spend their retirement having fun and traveling together.

“This is the best Christmas present I could ever imagine having,” Robinson told KHON2.

“It really is a Christmas miracle and we’re just so happy that we found it,” Macfarlane-Flores told the station.