‘I married my cousin’: jaw-dropping family secrets exposed by DNA tests

The explosive popularity of home DNA testing kits has led dozens of Americans to uncover shocking family secrets — including one man who found out he had 30 siblings, and another who found out her husband was actually a relative.

According to data from the survey site, about two in 10 Americans have taken a mail-order test yougov, while the global gene testing market is now worth about $14 billion.

And experts say the trend is driven by the availability of cheap and accurate tests, with the two major providers – 23andMe and AncestryDNA – offering them for as little as $99.

But there may be a darker reason for the growing interest: A gripping documentary recently exposed the detrimental health effects of incestuous families through the eyes of the deformed, inbred Whittaker family in West Virginia.

From the woman who found out she married her cousin to the daughter who realized her late father was switched at birth, here’s Dailymail.com’s roundup of the most jaw-dropping family surprises that come from tracing your roots.

‘I found out I had 30 siblings’

Andy Torrey had always believed he was an only child before ordering an AncestryDNA test for Christmas.

But the results started to ring alarm bells when it came back 14 percent French and 11 percent English. He believed his father was “mostly” English and French, so he had expected his own DNA count to be higher.

Then Torrey – of Atlanta, Georgia – discovered that his mother had actually used a sperm donor – whose donations had been used to create at least 30 other children.

Torrey has found his siblings and is going to meet them all over the US. He documented the experience on TikTok.

“I woke up two days ago thinking I was an only child and now I find out I am the second oldest at 31,” he wrote on the video-sharing platform.

He added, “What’s crazy is that I bought these kits for me and my parents for Christmas and they didn’t notify me.”

My father was switched at birth

Alice Plebuch made headlines in 2017 after discovering that her father had lived in the wrong family all his life.

Plebuch’s father was immensely proud of his Irish heritage – so much so that he had the Irish song ‘Danny Boy’ played at his wake.

So she expected her test to show a 100 percent Irish pedigree. Instead, she discovered she was half Jewish.

After more digging, she realized that her father and his sister – her so-called aunt – were not related at all.

After searching the hospital records, she realized that her Jewish father had been accidentally brought home by an Irish family.

Plebuch managed to make contact with the family of the man he was swapped with at birth.

“I really lost my whole identity. “I felt adrift. I didn’t know who I was — you know, who I was,” she told the Washington Post at the time.

“Rare condition meant I wasn’t related to the children I bore’

Single mother Lydia Fairchild was 26, unemployed and seeking state aid in 2002 when she was asked to take a DNA test to prove her family were all related.

But the results suggested that Fairchild had no genetic link to the two children she gave birth to, causing alarm among social services.

“I knew I was wearing them, and I knew I was delivering them. I had no doubts about it,” Washington’s Fairchild said at the time.

She gave birth for a third time and again DNA tests said she was not related to the newborn – despite carrying him for nine months.

It later turned out that the mismatch was due to an extremely rare condition called “chimerism.”

It meant she had technically been a twin in the womb, but the other embryo died early, meaning she was “storing” her sibling’s cells.

The condition meant she had two cell lines – only one of which matched that of her children.

Her case was featured in the 2006 documentary ‘The twin inside me’.

‘I married my cousin’

The results of DNA testing can be so surprising that it spawned its own hashtag on TikTok ‘#ancestrysecrets’.

Influencer Celina Quinones was married to her husband Joseph for ten years and had three of his children when she discovered they were related.

Celina, from Denver, Colorado, decided to take a DNA test through Myheritage.com in 2016.

It indicated they had a genetic match of 62 centimorgan — a unit for measuring genetic linkage — meaning they share ancestors eight generations ago.

But the pair are now making the news light-hearted, with Celina jokingly referring to Joseph as her “cousband.”

“I wouldn’t change it for the world… Husband and wife for life!” she explained on TikTok.

There’s a reason good couples look alike. I’m here precisely to make people aware.’

Anita Foeman, a DNA expert at West Chester University, told Dailymaill.com that Hill’s story is common.

“Research shows that we are attracted to people who have similarities with us,” she said.

“A lot of people worry about that when they find out they have all these relatives that they didn’t know about. What if I had met that person in a bar?’

Foeman adds that she expects DNA testing will soon become mandatory at birth and simply become a standard part of their medical records.