After posting a Mothers Day video in May 2017 about the search for his birth mother – a video which now has over 200 million views – Ryan Jon has shared a remarkable reunion story.
Listeners to his new home at Hit 92.9 on the Xavier, Heidi and Ryan Perth breakfast show heard the story yesterday and Ryan appeared on The Project last night too.
The news is Jon recently met his birth father and his two half-brothers for the first time ever.
Unfortunately so far he has not met his birth mother but is still looking.
In a story about the family reunion, Jon posted:
I met my biological father for the first time after finding him with an Ancestry DNA Test.
I’d never seen a biological relative of mine in my 30 years on this planet.
I’d never heard the saying “like father like son”. No one ever asked, “Do you look more like your mother or your father?” I often felt sheepish when a doctor asked about my medical history and I couldn’t answer.
But Ancestry’s DNA tests changed that for me.
Knowing nothing about my family roots, it was fun to find out I’m 62% Irish, 11% Italian and 10% Greek. But it was a random potential fourth cousin that led to me meeting my birth father.
He’s an American man and was backpacking around the world when he was 23 years old and it was during this trip he met my biological mother.
They didn’t know each other for long, but it was long enough for me to be conceived and be brought into this world. My birth father continued his travels and for 30 years had no idea that he had a long lost biological Australia son. Without that Ancestry DNA test, we wouldn’t have known each other for the rest of our lives.
My birth father welcomed me with open arms. “What’s mine is yours,” he said many times, telling me that with his web of friends, colleagues and cousins that “you’ve got a place to stay in almost every city in the USA” and invited me to family fishing trips, Thanksgiving, Christmas and any other event I wanted to attend.
I flew to London where he now works and lives. We hung out and went out for dinner and drinks for the week I was there. I met his wife and his two sons and after growing up as an adoptee and only child, having half-brothers that look like me was incredible.
Jon has posted his video, which he has produced himself, on Sunday night/Monday morning on his Facebook page.
Photo: Ryan Jon with his birth father and newfound half-brothers