Rory Feek‘s daughter Hopie says that DNA testing has revealed that the man she grew up knowing as “dad” is not, in fact, her biological father.
That’s not all.
She’s gotten to meet and know her biological dad, and now, she says she’s feeling a kind of “unconditional love” no father figure has never shown her before.
Hopie announced her news to fans with a video on social media, saying she felt compelled to take a 23andMe DNA test after feeling for as long as she can remember that she was “a little bit different” from her family.
Now in her 30s, Hopie has known Feek as her dad her whole life, and she’s frequently appeared in his blog posts and spent much of her life on his farm property in Tennessee. She was there during the family’s most difficult times, such as when Feek’s wife and Joey + Rory duet partner Joey Feek died in 2016 after a cancer battle. Heidi has also been a major presence in the life of Indiana, the soon-to-be-11-year-old daughter that Feek and his late wife share.
She and her older sister Heidi grew up primarily with Feek, though in adulthood, they’ve reconnected with their mother Tamara. In 2018, Feek revealed that Hopie had come out as gay, and he admitted that accepting her challenged his Christian faith.
In recent years, Heidi and Hopie have also been involved in a very public family feud with their dad, in which Feek has blocked his daughters from seeing their younger sister Indiana.
But Hopie says she’s found some healing in the relationship she has formed with her newly-discovered biological father, whom she identifies as B.C.
Hopie shared a picture of the two of them together in her video, admitting that she “stalked” him on the Internet to try to find him.
“Within 24 hours of finding him and messaging him on Facebook, he was here at my doorstep just to give me a hug and meet me,” she says. “I’ve never experienced unconditional love like that before.”
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Hopie beams as she describes how warmly B.C. has welcomed her into his life.
“There’s so much more love to my story than I ever thought there was,” she says. “I reconnected with my mom this past year, and she’s freaking awesome.
“Learning how much she loves me and how much she wanted to be a part of my life but never really could,” she continues, “to [now finding] a dad who I never realized I had, who just immediately loved me and is so excited to call me his daughter.”
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