NASHVILLE – Hopie Feek, who grew up believing country singer Rory Feek was her father, has revealed that a DNA test shows that her “dad” is not really her dad.
In a post on Instagram, Feek details how she took a 23andM3 DNA test after feeling for a long time she was “a bit different’
“I got the results I never knew I needed,” Hopie Feek said in the Instagram video. The tests showed her biological father was someone she names only as B.C.
“Over the last six months he and I have gotten really close and gotten to know each other and it’s so strange because we’re so much alike,” Feek says.
Hopie, 37, describes locating her biological father, saying she didn’t know how to find him, but that she “literally stalked” him online.
“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.”
Hopie and her older sister Heidi are daughters of Tamara Gillmor, who was married to Rory Feek from 1985 until their divorce in 1992. Hopie was born in 1988.
In 2002, Rory Feek remarried. He and his new wife, Joey, started the duo Joey + Rory. The Grammy-award-winning pair made a half-dozen albums and TV specials, toured the world and sold nearly a million records from 2008 to 2016, according to the website for Homestead at Hardison Mill, Feek’s restored historic farm, home and concert hall south of Nashville.
As a songwriter, Feek has written multiple No. 1 songs, including “Some Beach” by Blake Shelton, “A Little More Country Than That” by Easton Corbin, and “The Chain of Love” by Clay Walker, along with having his songs recorded by other artists, including Reba McEntire, Waylon Jennings, Buck Owens, Collin Raye and Mark Wills.
Feek and Joey had one daughter, Indiana, who was born in 2014. Joey died of cancer in 2016. Rory remarried in 2024.
Hopie has known Feek as her dad her whole life, and frequently appeared in his blog posts and spent much of her life on his farm property in Tennessee, Taste of Country said. She was there during the family’s most difficult times, such as when Joey Feek died after her cancer battle.
Though she and Heidi grew up primarily with Rory Feek, in adulthood, they reconnected with their mother Tamara.
“There’s so much more love to my story than I ever thought there was,” Hopie says in her Instagram video. “I reconnected with my mom this past year, and she’s freaking awesome.
“Learning how much she loves me and how much she wanted to be a part of my life but never really could,” she continues, “to [now finding] a dad who I never realized I had, who just immediately loved me and is so excited to call me his daughter.”
