{"id":617964,"date":"2026-10-02T01:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/617964\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:16:09","slug":"an-adopted-man-discovers-his-biological-father-is-michael-mcdonald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/617964\/","title":{"rendered":"An Adopted Man Discovers His Biological Father Is Michael McDonald"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMichael Goessling, a St. Louis man who was adopted, has found his birth parents, and one of them happens to be Michael McDonald<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tGoessling shared his amazing discovery with KCTV 5<\/a>. He was adopted when he was an infant by Paul and Kay Goessling. \u201cAlways knew I was adopted,\u201d Goessling said. \u201cHad a wonderful childhood. I could not pick two finer folks to raise me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYet, he still wondered about his biological parents, who were both 14 when Goessling was put up for adoption. But then, he was contacted by a half-brother who he didn\u2019t know existed who had taken 23andMe DNA test. \u201cWithin 36 hours, he got an email notifying him: Michael Goessling, half-brother, St. Louis,\u201d Goessling recalled. \u201cAnd that\u2019s how this all began.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOn his 58th birthday, Goessling met his birth mother in person, and later he spoke with his biological father on the phone. Goessling asked what he did for a career, and his dad said he was a musician who would soon be coming through St. Louis while on tour that summer.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd I said, \u2018Are you Michael McDonald?\u2019\u201d Goessling said. \u201cAnd he said, \u2018Yeah, I\u2019m afraid so.\u2019\u201d Turns out that it was the Michael McDonald \u2014 of Doobie Brothers<\/a> and \u201cWhat a Fool Believes\u201d and \u201cThis Is It\u201d and \u201cI Keep Forgettin\u2019 (Every Time You\u2019re Near),\u201d and many other hits fame. And though they share the same first name, that was not an intentional pick by his adopted parents.<\/p>\n

\n\tGoessling\u2019s biological mother and father have remained close and discussed their son over the years. \u201cWe always talked about him. And it always came down to our greatest fear was, how did life treat him?\u201d McDonald told the St. Louis outlet. \u201cI always carried that guilt with me. But just to know that he was okay and that he had a good life, and a life certainly that I wouldn\u2019t have been able to afford him at that time, was a great reward. The real rock stars in this story are his adoptive parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tMcDonald and Goessling later met up in person. \u201cWhen he first saw me, he put his arms out, gave me a big old bear hug and told me he loved me, and I told him the same,\u201d Goessling said.<\/p>\n

\n\tMcDonald also found out when the pair met that he is a grandfather. \u201cYeah, I\u2019m still wrapping my head around that,\u201d McDonald told the station. He added: \u201cMy daughter-in-law is just the daughter-in-law you\u2019d hope for. And the kids are two of the greatest kids you\u2019d ever meet. I\u2019m just so proud of them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Goessling, a St. Louis man who was adopted, has found his birth parents, and one of them…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":617965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,304341,156,84358,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-617964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-doobie-brothers","tag-entertainment","tag-michael-mcdonald","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/617965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}