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'My life is complete now I've met my lost brother'

Sarah Spina-Matthews
BBC News, Yorkshire
Jeanette Woodyatt A middle-aged man and woman stand in a bar with their arms around each other, smiling. The woman is holding a glass of wine. Jeanette Woodyatt
Jeanette Woodyatt says it "felt like something was missing" before she met her half-brother Graham Briggs

For her entire childhood, Jeanette Woodyatt had no idea she had a half-brother living just 40 miles away from her.

But after a 25-year search, she says getting to know her relative Graham Briggs - who grew up in Bolton and now lives in the US - has "made her life complete".

Jeanette, from Skipton, says her late father told her at the age of 18 that he had a son that he had given up for adoption, but asked her not to go looking for him until he decided to reach out.

"It felt odd, it felt like something was missing," she recalls.

After her father's death, Jeanette says her grandmother received a phone call from Graham but turned him away as she "didn't want to open old wounds".

But for Jeanette, it marked the beginning of her long search.

Skipton woman connects with long-lost San Diego half-brother

"I had to fulfil my dad's wish that when he came looking, we welcomed him into the family," she says.

"I contacted [the phone company] and said 'please help, please pass me the phone number', but because of data protection they couldn't.

"Then I went through several adoption agencies - they tried for over 10 years to find him and hit a blank."

Jeanette decided to reach out to the ITV programme Long Lost Family and later discovered he was living in San Diego, California.

The pair met for the first time in 2023 at a pub in Keighley, where their father was from, with Jeanette describing it as the "best experience".

She says: "It was so scary because I thought, is he going to look like my dad, is it going to upset me because he looks like my dad?

"Within seconds of seeing him, after the tears, it was like we'd always known each other."

Jeanette Woodyatt Two men and a woman stand on a restaurant patio overlooking the moors of Yorkshire. Two men with cameras and a boom microphone are filming them. Jeanette Woodyatt
The half-siblings finally met on the ITV show Long Lost Family

Jeanette says she travelled to Mexico for her half-brother's 60th birthday and is heading to San Diego soon to visit his family.

"We have such a deep relationship already, we speak weekly," she says.

"I do feel like I've fulfilled my dad's wishes - even though it was sad he missed out on meeting his dad, I can fill in a lot of the blanks for him."

She concludes: "It makes his life complete and my life complete."

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