Life

The Way These College Classmates Discovered They Were Biological Brothers Will Make You Cry

Normally I wince at all the saccharine holiday stories — unless, of course, they're on Netflix and take place in Aldovia — but, OK, I am very here for this one. Two students at the same Georgia college discovered last week that they are biological brothers, after one of them, who was put up for adoption as an infant, used a DNA ancestry kit to track down his birth family. I cannot promise that what happened next will not make you cry on your couch, so consider yourself forewarned.

As first reported by BuzzFeed, Kieron Graham, 20, a junior and a political science major at Kennesaw State University, was adopted in 1997 when he was only three months old. Though he knew his birth parents' first names — and that he had a brother named Vincent — growing up he was never able to find them. "I periodically would look for them and check on Facebook, but I never knew their last name so it was always hard," he told BuzzFeed.

His adoptive parents were very supportive of his search for his biological family, and for Christmas this year they gave him and his other adopted siblings Ancestry DNA kits. Using the kit, Graham discovered he was a strong match to a 29-year-old man named Vincent Ghant, who had the same first name as his biological brother and had also taken an Ancestry DNA test.

Graham found Ghant on Facebook and sent him a message. Ghant responded, and quickly the two of them realized they were, indeed, family. BRACE FOR THE TEARS.

As Graham points out in his tweet, the craziest part of this story isn't just that he was able to find his long-lost biological family using DNA tests and social media, though that's certainly blogworthy. The big kicker here, though, is that Ghant is also a junior at Kennesaw State University, and he has the exact same major as Graham — in fact, the two think they may have even shared a class together, and they live only 15 minutes away from each other.

Ghant told BuzzFeed he always knew he had a brother, and in fact, he remembered playing with Graham when he was just an infant. "Feed him his bottles and change diapers,” Vincent told Atlanta TV station WXIA. “All of that ran through my head. All of that ran through my head immediately because that was my last memory of him."

Ghant told Inside Edition, “When I realized it was him, I was shocked and then elated just to meet him again and talk to him. I was very amazed. I started thinking, ‘What if I passed him all these years and didn’t even know it?’ It was just fate that brought us together.”

Ghant and Graham's mother, Shawn, was a struggling single mother working full-time as a nurse when Graham was born, Ghant said, and couldn't afford to keep and care for the new baby.

"I asked my mother about him throughout my life, but the pain was so heavy on her that it was hard for her to drum up the worlds to explain it to me...so it just got to the point where I was, like, I'll just wait for her when she's ready," Ghant told BuzzFeed.

Graham ended up going over to Ghant's house, where he met Ghant's wife and incredibly adorable daughter.

I'm sorry, I swear I'm not crying, I've just got something in my eye, OK???

Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

Graham did end up meeting his birth mother, who told WXIA she was ecstatic at being reunited with her long-lost son. "Although it’s been 20 years, there’s not one day you don’t think about him," she said.

Graham is also apparently in touch with his birth father, who he says "broke down in tears" when he made contact. His adoptive parents have invited the Ghants to spend Christmas with them, so Graham gets to celebrate the holiday with his entire family oh god I'm crying again.