Sisters Marilyn Gould and Lorraine Skinner meet after 75 years of not knowing each other existed

For more than seven decades, each lived her life thinking she was an only child – until a DNA test proved otherwise, and all sorts of coincidences along the way – including working in the same shop.

It took 75 years for sisters Marilyn Gould and Lorraine Skinner to meet each other – even though they were born just six months apart.

The two women share the same biological father but were born to different mothers in different states, and only became aware of each other’s existence through Ancestry DNA testing five years ago.

“Neither of us knew the other one existed,” said Mrs Gould, now 81, who was born in Adelaide but was raised and lives in Port Pirie.

“It was absolutely wonderful, and we hit it off right from the word go. We speak now two or three, maybe four times a week.”

The half-sisters even celebrated their 80th birthdays together.

“We’ve become very much sisters now,” said Melbourne-born Mrs Skinner, who now lives in McLaren Vale.

“It’s amazing how alike we are in our likes, even in food, movies and music.”

Laurie Skinner and Marilyn Gould share the same biological father but were born to different mothers in different states, and only became aware of each other’s existence through Ancestry DNA testing five years ago.

Mrs Skinner was raised by her grandparents until she was 10, and later adopted by the man who married her mother. She then lived in the US, just outside Washington DC, for about 25 years from 1980.

“I didn’t really know I was adopted until I was in my 20s,” Mrs Skinner said.

Long before doing the DNA test, Mrs Gould began researching her family through more traditional genealogy.

“I was adopted, so in the early 1970s I started looking for my biological family,” she said.

Just before she turned 40, Mrs Gould found her biological mother, who revealed the name of her biological father, former RAAF serviceman Alf Gledhill, but asked that she not look for him.

The two hit it off instantly – and even celebrated their Pics: Facebook.

However, she later did some research which led to discovering in 2005 that she also had two half-brothers, who were part of Gledhill’s legal marriage family.

At a Gledhill family reunion, an elderly aunt was talking to Mrs Gould as if she knew all about her, stating that she saw her when she was a baby.

This led to the suspicion that Gledhill must have fathered another female child, but the family could find no evidence.

However, in his RAAF records, there was a letter from a young woman who was trying to find Gledhill when he was stationed in England.

When Mrs Gould tested her DNA five years ago, a person’s name came up as a very high match.

“This person had only put one name on her family tree – and it was the name of the girl I’d seen in these papers, probably 20 years earlier, who was her grandmother … which meant that her mother was my sister.”

Coincidentally, Lorraine also lived in Port Pirie in 1973 – but at that time her sister Marilyn had temporarily moved away. Both sisters also worked at Port Pirie’s department store Prests, but at different times.

In another coincidence, a photograph of Mrs Gould taken at one of her own daughters’ weddings has a young woman in the background – who turned out to be one of her nieces, who were friends of the groom.