Veteran Meets His Daughter After 34 Years Of Not Knowing He’s A Dad

Every family has their own story. While some are not as complicated as others, there are a few families who have emotional beginnings and endings for their stories.

A Short Romance

In the mid-1980s, a Marine named Tom Chaney was stationed in Alaska where he met a woman from the Navy. Their meeting sparked a short relationship that ended quite soon.

How It Ended

Tom and his ex went their separate ways when Tom moved to Hawaii and the woman got shipped off to a base in Virginia.

The Fruit Of Their Love

What Tom didn’t know was his ex got pregnant while they were together. However, the woman put her child up for adoption.

Finding Her Mom

The child, Stephanie McKenna, tried to reach out to her mom when she was 16 years old but her mother wasn’t interested in forming a relationship with her.

Tom’s Life

Tom, on the other hand, joined the police force after serving in the Marines. That’s when he realized he didn’t want to have kids because he saw how hard life is for someone with a family.

Supportive Parents

Things started falling into place when Stephanie’s adoptive parents gifted her a 23andMe kit to find her biological father, and that’s when she got connected to her grandfather, Tom Sr.

20 Minutes Later

Stephanie reached out to him on Facebook, and to her surprise, she got a response only after 20 minutes. Since then, she and her dad, Tom, had been talking over the phone through voice and video calls until they decided to meet in person.

The Big Day

Eventually, Stephanie flew to Arizona, where Tom was residing. At the airport, her dad was waiting for her with a sign that said, “Stephanie McKenna, here is your father.”

Lovely Reunion

The father and daughter were both emotional when they shared a hug. Tom said, “It was a meeting 34 years in the making.” The two of them bonded over the weekend and they learned that they both share a lot of similarities.

Watch how Stephanie found her long-lost dad in the video below.

Watch Video Here: