Have you ever called one of your friends your “brother” or “sister?” I know I have. In elementary school and middle school, my then-best friend and I would wear matching clothes and shoes as if we were sisters. We even told people that we were sisters as a little joke (and some people actually believed it).
But what are the odds that you find out that your close friend really is your sibling? It apparently does happen. Ashley Thomas and Toya Wimberly of Homles, Pennsylvania were best friends since the sixth grade when they met at Sulzberger Middle School. A whopping 17 years later, the girls discovered that they were blood-related sisters! Crazy, right?
Oddly enough, many observers noticed that Ashley and Toya had many similarities in terms of how they looked and how they acted. From sharing gaps in their front teeth to both having high cheekbones, the ladies also felt like they could be sisters. Both of them also ended up taking a career path in business. Toya owns a transportation business called Global Rides Transportation, and Ashley is the owner and operator of Hot Headz Hair Studio. But they thought these were just coincidences. Throughout their friendship, neither did either of them believe they actually share DNA.
Even two years after the girls met when Ashley found out that her dad Mike wasn’t her biological father, she didn’t put two and two together.
But later last month, Toya’s father, Kenneth Wimberly, found out that his daughter’s friend was her legitimate sister.
It all started when Kenneth was featured in a photo at his daughter Toya’s engagement party. The best friend of Ashley’s deceased mother instantly recognized Kenneth and pointed it out. Kenneth, too, remembered the woman and her best friend.
When the pieces started fitting together, they then decided to conduct a DNA test to confirm or deny their findings. It turns out, their suspicions were correct: Ashley and Toya are sisters!
“It was just God’s work, man,” the stunned father said once he found out he had another daughter.
The 29- and 31-year-old sisters are still the closest of friends. They recently went on vacation to Miami, Florida together as a way to form a closer bond. But now that they know they’re sisters by b***d, and each of their children now have a new aunt and cousins, that bond only got stronger.
It’s wild to think that two ladies could be best friends for so long, and nobody, not even them, had an initial clue that they could be related!
Listen to Ashley and Toya in an interview below.
