Sisters, separated at birth, reunite 40 years later by TOTAL chance

What are the chances that two siblings separated as young children meet by chance – in PERSON – decades later on the other side of the globe? If you answered “slim but not impossible,” you’d be correct, because that’s exactly what happened to two women from Sarasota, Fla. who were separated for over 40 years and found each other while they were on the same shift at the same hospital. Just wow.

Holly Hoyle O’Brien and Meagan Hughes were born Pok-nam Shin and Eun-sook, respectively, in South Korea. In the early 1970s, when they were five and three years old, the sisters were separated due to a tumultuous family environment and later adopted by two different American families. Hughes grew up in Kingston, N.Y. while O’Brien grew up in Alexandria, Va. – only about 300 miles from her sister.

And this past March, fate stepped in when Hughes began working as a physical-therapy assistant at Sarasota’s Doctors Hospital, where O’Brien had just begun working as a nursing assistant two months earlier. Eventually, the two women were assigned to the same floor, and – this might just be the coolest part of the story – they hit it off immediately as friends. Once they began talking to each other about their respective family histories, they had a DNA test done in August. And it came back positive. “I was so moved by it…I was so happy to know that we got our answer,” Hughes told the Sarasota-based Herald-Tribune of the test results. “It was one of the best days I ever had.” “I never gave up on her,” O’Brien added before breaking down in tears. “[After] all those years, I had to find her.”

And we are ALL in tears. You can check out a clip from the Herald-Tribune below, where the sisters discuss their reunion. I think I’m right in saying The Parent Trap has nothing on Hughes and O’Brien. We’re so happy for them, and wish them many wonderful years of sisterhood to share together.

(Image via Twitter/ Herald-Tribune)