This is the emotional moment a woman saw a photograph of her ‘secret sister’, whom she didn’t know existed until 2018, for the first time.
Teaching assistant Mandy Irvin, 56, who lives in West Sussex, enjoyed a happy childhood in Hertfordshire with her parents and younger brother, completely unaware that she had a sister.
It wasn’t until her mother’s death in 2018 that Mandy’s father let her in on the ‘family secret’.
Her father, whom she was caring for at the time, dropped the bombshell randomly, saying: ‘I just want to make sure mum told you the family secret’.
Clueless to what he meant, she probed further. He revealed that when Mandy’s mother was 17, and he was 18, she got pregnant.
Given that they were still teenagers, both of their parents were horrified to learn the news.
Mandy’s maternal grandparents were certain that they were too young to properly care for a child and demanded that they give the baby, whom they went on to call Sandra, up for adoption.
The 56-year-old now speculates that her grandmother thought her father was no good for her mother, and that giving up their child would lead to the end of their relationship.
Teaching assistant Mandy Irvin (pictured), 56, who lives in West Sussex, broke down in tears after she learned her older sister, whom she didn’t know she had until 2018, is alive and well
Nevertheless, they stayed together and wed when Mandy’s mother was 21. But their first child was always kept as a painful secret from then on.
When Mandy learned of the news in 2018, she immediately set out to find her long-lost sister.
But when her search came to a dead end, she employed the help of ITV’s Long Lost Family team.
ITV’s team discovered that after Sandra was adopted, she was renamed Jenny and was raised by a family who lived less than 10 miles away from Mandy’s childhood home.
In an emotional scene in this evening’s episode, co-host Davina McCall broke the news to Mandy that her sister has been found.
McCall, while sitting in Mandy’s home, presents her with a picture of her sister, revealing that the team has located her.
Immediately, Mandy broke down in tears, given Jenny’s similar appearance to her mother, saying: ‘Oh wow, she looks like my mum.’
‘She looks like my mum’s side of the family, 100 per cent my mum. Oh my goodness, it’s so lovely.’
In an emotional episode of Long Lost Family, which airs on Thursday, Mandy and her sister Jenny (pictured left) meet for the first time
Mandy added: ‘She’s got my mum’s smile, and her love for big earrings, it’s absolutely amazing.’
Elsewhere in the episode, co-host Nicky Campbell meets Jenny at the Hertfordshire school where she now works. Campbell delivered the news of Mandy’s search, which left Jenny shocked but delighted.
‘I’m really excited now. There’s just been so many questions going round and round in my head,’ Jenny said after.
In heartwarming final scenes, the sisters meet for the first time in Hertfordshire, and click immediately.
After meeting her sister, Mandy, on cloud nine, said: ‘On a scale of 1 to 10… 100! It’s been absolutely amazing.’
It comes after a woman who spent five decades searching for her birth mother revealed her joy after meeting the half-siblings she never knew she had.
Katherine Fletcher, 61, and her brother were raised by their parents in Yorkshire.
At the age of seven, however, her mother told her that she was adopted, changing the course of her life forever. ‘I felt extremely confused…I felt ashamed of myself,’ Katherine said when recalling the emotional memory.
As she got older, she grew determined to find her birth mother, and by her early teens, she obtained her adoption file, which told her more details about her origins.
She learned that at the time she was conceived in 1964, her mother was 19 and was in a relationship with an archaeology student studying at a London-based university.
But when she became pregnant, he refused to help her birth mother, making her feel as though she had to go through the pregnancy alone, and with no option but to give Katherine up for adoption.
After her search came to a dead end, she reached out to ITV’s Long Lost Family, who helped her learn more about her past.
Though she was told her mother had sadly passed away in 2006, she came to realise she had two half-siblings based in Canada, and in an emotional scene, she finally got to meet them.
Long Lost Family airs on ITV1 on Thursday at 9pm.
