Long Lost Twins Reunite After 33 Years Using the Same DNA Testing Service
By Carl Samson
March 23, 2018
A pair of identical twins who were separated at birth in South Korea found each other in the U.S. 33 years later after using the same DNA testing service.
Left tied to a pole, Amanda Dunford was found by a street vendor, while Katey Bennett was left in a basket on the steps of an orphanage.
Both moved to the U.S. as kids after being adopted by American parents. Dunford was taken to Arizona while Bennett ended up in California.
Dunford’s family were told that she had a sister but was also adopted. In 2013, she took a DNA test from 23andMe and found a distant cousin, but not the sister she hoped to find.
Yet fate had its way of making things happen as Bennett coincidentally took the same test just last year.
The results were no less than shocking.
As Bennett found out, she matched 100% with someone who already took the test. Her name is Amanda Dunford and she happens to be her “identical twin.”
Bennett, who had never thought of having a sister, looked for Dunford on social media and found herself close to looking at a mirror.
“I had gone my whole life with such doubt I’d ever find anyone blood-related to me. It was easier to deny it and say it’s not real. Because I didn’t want to let my barriers down and really believe it,” she told WKTR.
Bennett immediately sent Dunford a message, and the latter received it with the same reaction.
“I just shot out of my bed. I thought ‘This is too easy.’ I felt like we were going to find each other when we were old and gray and she could be in Korea,” she said.
Reality sunk even deeper when they saw each other on Skype, which Dunford described as “eerie.”
“I felt like I was talking to myself the entire time. It was just a very surreal experience,” she told Today.
There were differences in the way they talked and did their makeup, but the twins also found strikingly similar experiences; apparently, they both failed algebra on the same year and passed their driving test on second attempt.
Bennett also shared about them having “little OCD tendencies,” which Dunford explained:
“I can’t have my volume on an odd number. It has to be an even number. But when I go to the public restroom and I get paper towels, three. It has to be three — and she’s the same way.”
The twins have since been on various TV shows to share amazing their story.
For now, life goes on for both sisters, but they will surely keep in touch. Dunford, who has a 6-year-old son, is a chief petty officer in the Navy, while Bennett works in the hotel industry.
They are also keeping the birthdays they’ve known their whole lives — Bennett’s is on Dec. 25, 1983, while Dunford celebrates hers on Jan. 13, 1984.
Nonetheless, the twins find happiness in knowing that they’re now sharing both days with their sister.
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