'We Were Friends Before We Were Sisters': DNA Test Reunites Indian-Born Women

Two Indian-born women adopted by separate families discovered they were sisters nearly 3 decades after meeting as teens. Meena Geltink and Minal Tijssen first became friends at a gathering. Years later, Tijssen’s DNA test revealed a 100% sister match

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They met as teenagers without knowing they were sisters

Two Indian-born women who grew up in separate adoptive families in the Netherlands have discovered they are biological sisters, almost three decades after they first met and became friends.

Meena Geltink, 43, and Minal Tijssen, 44, were both left at orphanages in India as babies before being adopted by different Dutch families. They grew up around 130 kilometres apart, unaware that their biological sister was living relatively close by.

Their remarkable story began in 1996, when the two teenagers met at a gathering for adopted children. Neither knew much about their biological families, but they quickly formed a close friendship.

Minal and Meena first met in 1996, at a meet-up for adopted kids. They became close friends, calling each other “sis,” because people said they looked so alike — but they eventually lost touch.

Then, after one of them took a DNA test and found a 100% match for a sibling, they… pic.twitter.com/WS6gHRAPz5

— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) August 13, 2026

There was something unusual about their connection. Their friends noticed that they looked remarkably alike, while the two girls themselves felt an immediate sense of familiarity.

They exchanged addresses and stayed in touch through letters. They even jokingly called each other “sis”. Neither could have imagined that the nickname was closer to the truth than they realised.

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Fifteen years without contact

They eventually lost touch and went their separate ways. For around 15 years, there was no contact between them.

Their extraordinary connection resurfaced years later when Tijssen decided to take a MyHeritage DNA test.

In April, she received her results and was stunned to find a 100% match identifying another person as her sister.

Tijssen was sitting on her sofa when the notification appeared on her phone. At first, she struggled to believe the result.

She searched for Geltink on social media and looked through her photographs. Then came the astonishing realisation: the woman was the same girl she had met at the adopted-children gathering nearly three decades earlier.

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‘We were friends before we were sisters’

The DNA result suddenly explained the strong bond the two had felt as teenagers.

“We were friends before we were sisters,” Tijssen told Reuters. “We were sisters the whole time, but we didn't know.”

The women finally reunited in the Netherlands on August 11. Their first meeting after the discovery was emotional, with tears, hugs and laughter. They also took their first selfie together as biological sisters.

Geltink, a mother of three, said she had spent years feeling that something was missing from her life. Meeting Tijssen again gave her the feeling that an important part of that missing picture had finally been found.

“When I see you, it's like I'm home,” Geltink told her sister.

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A family connection found by chance

Tijssen, who lives in France with her partner and two sons, said she had always felt loved by her adoptive Dutch family. However, she had also experienced loneliness because she knew little about her birth relatives.

Since discovering the truth, the sisters have been speaking and messaging each other for hours every day.

They are now getting to know each other in a completely new way, not simply as two women who became friends as teenagers, but as biological family.

The DNA test did more than provide an answer about their ancestry to the women. It explained a friendship that had begun almost 30 years earlier, when two girls who did not know they were related somehow found each other.