A Brazilian woman in search of her long lost mother got the shocking surprise of a lifetime when she found out that her husband actually turned out to be her half-brother, The Independent reports.
Adriana, 39, and her husband Leandro, 37, have been together for more than seven years, and they have a 6-year-old daughter together.
When they initially started dating, they bonded over one shared experience: they had both been abandoned by their mothers while they were still young children.
A funny ongoing joke between the pair was also that they knew their birth mothers’ names were both Maria—an incredibly common name in Brazil.
Adriana, a cosmetics saleswoman, hadn’t seen her estranged mother since she left her with her father at just 1-year-old.
Leandro, a truck driver in San Paulo, had been raised by his step-mother after his mother abandoned him at 8-years-old.
Adriana lived in San Paulo, her hometown, when she was young, but she later left the city, married a man, and had three children.
When her marriage fell apart, she moved back to her hometown, where she met Leandro and fell in love with him 10 years ago.
Adriana had always thought about her birth mother, who she knew so little about. Eventually, curiosity turned into an active search.
Unable to find her mother on her own, Adriana reached out to a local radio station in hopes of finding out who she was.
Radio Globo's The Time Is Now program, which specializes in finding long lost relatives, went above and beyond, and soon Adriana and her mother were reunited on live air.
The emotional public reunion took a turn for the worst when Maria decided she had to get something off her chest. She had another child, a boy—named Leandro.
"I don't believe that you're telling me this. Leandro is my husband," Adriana exclaimed upon realizing she had unknowingly married her brother.
Despite the bombshell news, the worried wife and mother only had one big concern. She was terrified that Leandro would immediately want to divorce her.
“Now I'm scared to go home and find out that Leandro doesn't want me anymore. I love him so much," she said through tears.
After a long talk, the couple decided that their love was too strong to ignore.
"Only death is going to separate us. All this happened because God wanted it to happen,” Adriana later said. "Of course it would have been different if we had known all this before, but we didn't and we fell in love.”
The couple has also started talking to their birth mother, who they’ve made plans to meet with as a family.
