His best friend of 60 years is his brother

Name: His best friend of 60 years is his brother
Uploaded: 2018-01-23T18:12:08Z
Duration: 6 min 14 s
Description: Walter MacFarlane and Alan Robinson became friends in the sixth grade and stayed best friends for sixty years. Then a DNA kit from Walter's kids turned up a close match under a strange name.

Walter MacFarlane and Alan Robinson became friends in the sixth grade and stayed best friends for sixty years. Then a DNA kit from Walter's kids turned up a close match under a strange name. more

"Our friendship was forged on the football field," one of them says. They played on an airline softball team together, Walter was at Alan's wedding, and when Alan got a sailboat, the two went sailing. For much of their lives, they lived less than 10 miles apart.

A man with gray hair and a mustache speaks in a patterned shirt, seated indoors with greenery outside. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — One of the friends recalls how it all began in the sixth grade.

Walter was adopted at birth and raised by his grandmother. He never knew who his birth parents were, and finding his father had been hit and miss. His older daughter, Cindy, wanted the family to look for him, so the kids gave Walter a DNA kit.

When the results came back, Walter says, "Alan wasn't only my best friend. He was my brother." For years, people had asked if they were brothers, and they always said no. They put the likeness down to their shared Hawaiian heritage. Side by side, it's hard to see how anyone missed it.

Two men in floral shirts stand near a wooden railing with green plants around them. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — For years, people asked the two friends if they were related.

Cindy, sitting in the audience, explains how it all came together. The kit turned up more than a thousand DNA matches. When she sorted them by strength of relationship, the top one read Robbie 737, close family or sibling.

She called her mom and dad. "I think we found a sibling," she told them, "but who is this Robbie 737?" Her mom had the answer. Tell Dad to call Alan, she said, because Alan flew 737s as a pilot for Aloha Airlines and everyone called him Robbie.

Two older adult males seated on a white couch in a modern studio with dark panels and soft lighting, wearing patterned shirts and beige pants. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third. — Walter MacFarlane and Alan Robinson became friends in the sixth grade and stayed best friends for sixty years.

At first, the family thought the two men shared a father. As it turns out, they have the same mother. They tried to stay cool about it, but inside the feeling was much simpler: "This is my brother."

Both families were thrilled and wanted to tell the world. A big family party was already in the works, so they made it one party and introduced Robbie to everyone there. The family was warm and accepting, and by their account there wasn't a dry eye in the place. "I cried so hard I could barely see," one of them says.