DNA Test Leads to Adopted Man Learning His Biological Father Is a Rock-and-Roll Legend
A man from St. Louis, Missouri, who’d been adopted, found out his biological father is five-time Grammy Award winner Michael McDonald after his half-brother took a DNA test last year.
McDonald’s younger son took a 23andMe ancestry test, which revealed he had a half-brother named Michael Goessling living in St. Louis, KMOV-TV reported this week.
In May of 2025, Goessling got a letter from an attorney representing his birth parents asking if he would like to be put in contact with them, according to The New York Times.
For his 58th birthday, Goessling reunited with his birth mom and later spoke with McDonald over the phone.
When Goessling asked his father what he did for work, McDonald said he was a musician and would be touring in St. Louis that summer.
“And I said, ‘Are you Michael McDonald?’” Goessling recalled. “And he said, ‘Yeah, I’m afraid so.’”
“I’m looking, and the voice, and it all starts coming together,” Goessling said during a phone interview with The New York Times on Thursday.
They later met in person and embraced, with McDonald telling his son that he loved him.
McDonald, 74, was known for his stint with the Doobie Brothers and produced several albums during his solo career, including the hit track “I Keep Forgettin,’” which debuted in 1982.
Goessling grew his hair and beard out during the COVID lockdowns and said people used to tell him that they loved his “whole Michael McDonald thing you got going on there.”
He was also a Doobie Brothers fan and had seen his father perform on at least two occasions.
“I remember distinctly the first time somebody pointed out a new Doobie Brothers song; it was ‘Takin’ It to the Streets,’” Goessling said. “I was an instant fan.”
McDonald had previously written in a memoir that he was only in eighth grade when his teenage girlfriend got pregnant, causing them to put Goessling up for adoption.
McDonald subsequently dropped out of school and devoted his attention to music.
He stayed in contact with Goessling’s mother, however, and they spent three decades trying to track him down.
“I was always very, very grateful to my birth parents for the choices they made on my behalf and giving me a shot in this world,” Goessling declared.
“I was certainly more prepared for perhaps, you know, Mike the retired schoolteacher or accountant or truck driver,” he said after learning of McDonald’s celebrity. “But certainly not Mike the five-time-Grammy-Award-winning Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Famer.”
Goessling works as a supplier for constructions projects and meets up with his birth father when he is in St. Louis.
“What might come from this story and the attention it’s getting all of a sudden is that the adoption narrative gets elevated in this country a little bit more and gets celebrated,” Goessling noted.
McDonald said he “carried that guilt” with him about giving Goessling up, but was happy to know he had a good life.
“But just to know that he was okay and that he had a good life, and a life certainly that I wouldn’t have been able to afford him at that time, was a great reward,” the singer proclaimed. “The real rock stars in this story are his adoptive parents.”
He also became a grandfather after reuniting with Goessling, who has a 16-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter.
“Yeah, I’m still wrapping my head around that,” McDonald concluded. “My daughter-in-law is just the daughter-in-law you’d hope for. And the kids are two of the greatest kids you’d ever meet. I’m just so proud of them.”
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