Daughter’s Paternity Test Results Not Surprising

Over the weekend, Rory Feek‘s daughter, Hopie, shared the results of a DNA test that prove the singer is not her real father.

On Tuesday (Feb. 11), he responded and told his side of the story.

The surprising plot twist came via a social media video at Hopie Feek’s Instagram. She says she took a 23andME test and confirmed a suspicion her birth mother had: Another man is her birth father.

“Within 24 hours of finding him and messaging him on Facebook, he was here at my doorstep just to give me a hug and meet me,” she says. “I’ve never experienced unconditional love like that before.”

Rory Feek says he didn’t know, but always suspected this might be the case.

• Rory Feek raised three daughters: Hopie, her older sister Heidi and their young half-sister, Indiana.
• The older girls’ mother (Tamara Gilmer) was not involved in their childhoods, although Hopie says she has recently re-connected with her.
• Rory was married to Joey Feek (ńee Martin) until her death in 2016. He married a woman named Rebecca last July.

Related: Country Stars Having Babies in 2025

Hopie told her father what she’d discovered some time before her public announcement. In a blog post called “A Different Dad,” he admits he’s spoken very little to his older daughters over the last year, so he was surprised and excited to see her calling.

“”‘I didn’t know,’ I told her, and I didn’t,” Feek writes of learning that another man fathered her. “But in another way Hopie, it doesn’t completely surprise me.”

Rory Feek goes on to explain that he thought Hopie was conceived shortly after his return from Japan in January 1988, and that she was born two weeks early. However, shortly after childbirth, he commented on how fully formed she was, and the doctor indicated to him that she was actually two weeks late.

That math put the moment of conception before he returned, but he didn’t press the issue with his ex-wife after she assured him the baby was his.

“And I also hurt for Hopie’s mom,” Rory says. “Knowing that she carried that secret around all these years. I can only imagine how hard that was, and how scary it must have been for her to finally tell the truth.”

In his 2017 autobiography, Feek doesn’t forward his suspicions, but does paint a more detailed picture of his relationship with his ex-wife. He admits he was not a good husband. He was unfaithful to Gilmer, he shares.

“In the end she, too, did some of the same things that I did and wasn’t true to me. But I take complete blame for the failure of the marriage. I could’ve done more. Could’ve been more.”

Since he’d raised Hopie as his daughter, he told her nothing between them would change.

“I love you as my daughter and I always will,” Rory Feek says he told her.

He then goes on to share how it came to be that he raised both of his older daughters, a story told similarly in This Life I Live.

As high schoolers, Hopie and Heidi tracked down their birth mother, but Hopie reveals that they’ve only truly reconnected within the last year.

“And honestly, all I can think is how thankful I am that she called me,” Rory writes toward the end of his post, “and that God gave us the opportunity to look into each other’s eyes and talk together. I hoped for the chance to let Hopie know how much I love her.”

“The truth is, if it weren’t for God’s grace in my own life, I’d be curled up in a fetal position right now, with all the mistakes I’ve made through the years.”