Michael Goessling discovered at age 58 that five-time Grammy winner Michael McDonald is his biological father, following a DNA test match with an unknown half-brother. The two men connected by phone while McDonald was touring, and have since met in person.
The 23andMe Match That Unraveled a Decades-Old St. Louis Family Mystery
Michael Goessling always knew he was adopted and enjoyed a happy upbringing with his adoptive parents, Paul and Kay, in St. Louis, Missouri, where he had a wonderful childhood and could not pick two finer folks to raise him. He was a crazy Doobie Brothers fan as an eight-year-old child, grooving to the band’s music, listening to tracks like “Black Water,and singing along to
China Grove.” He had even attended a few of his concerts over the years as a lifelong music obsessive who once worked in the music business, and had unknowingly paid to see perform twice as a young man. Yet questions about his biological origins remained with him for decades.
She and McDonald were about 14 years old when they conceived him, and they were told they were too young to raise him, leading him to be put up for adoption. Unnamed at birth, he was given his name by his adoptive mother, Kay, making it a happy coincidence that he shares a first name with his biological father. His birth mother and McDonald remained friends throughout the years. Before connecting with his biological father, Goessling’s half-brother Dylan, alongside his wife Amy Holland, used the site to track Goessling down. He learned that the younger McDonald and his sister Scarlett were aware of a half sibling somewhere and knew their father had never given up wanting to meet the son given up for adoption.
Phone Call to Tour Stop: Discovering a Voice He Had Admired for Decades
His biological father had deliberately remained in the background so mother and son could have their reunion first, wanting to take a back seat. Before father and son connected, McDonald left Goessling a voicemail. During their first conversation, which lasted about 90 minutes, McDonald mentioned that he was a musician and would be touring that summer, stopping in St. Louis. The voice immediately struck Goessling as strangely familiar, though he didn’t make the connection right away until he put the pieces together.
“Are you Michael McDonald?”
Michael Goessling, via Fox News
McDonald chuckled and replied, Yep, afraid so
. Goessling responded that it was getting crazier by the second and that he couldn’t get his head around it because it was too much. McDonald told him to take a minute. Goessling later admitted he thought he was being punked for a second, feeling like it couldn’t be real or possible, and described the discovery as feeling like a tsunami hit him, noting a year later that it can still feel like waking up from a crazy dream.
Decades of Guilt and the Surprise of Becoming a Grandfather
For McDonald, who joined The Doobie Brothers in 1975 as a temporary replacement before becoming a lead vocalist and keyboardist, leaving in 1982 to pursue a solo career, and previously serving as a backing vocalist for Steely Dan from 1973 to 1980—a career and journey to sobriety he explored in his 2024 memoir What a Fool Believes, alongside being inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2025 with bandmates Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmons—the reunion brought profound emotional relief after years of carrying quiet worry about how his son’s life had turned out.
“We always talked about him. And it always came down to our greatest fear was, how did life treat him? I always carried that guilt with me. 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 real rock stars in this story are his adoptive parents.”
Michael McDonald, via The Independent
When the father and son finally met in person, they shared an immediate bear hug, putting their arms out and telling each other they loved one another. McDonald described it as a wonderful, wonderful experience to see Michael and get to meet his son after all those years thinking about him. The meeting also introduced McDonald to a brand-new role: grandfather.