It’s nice to have someone you can freely express yourself to without being judged or hated. There are different kinds of friendship, but the one that lasts a long time is the kind of friendship that makes people feel like they’re family!

Alan Robinson and Walter Macfarlane have been friends since they were in sixth grade, and with the kind of bond that they have, they were just like family. These two friends were born 15 months apart. Alan was adopted at birth while Walter was raised by his grandmother and he never knew who his biological father was.

They became schoolmates and played football together at Punahou school. Later on, they also played on the Aloha Airlines softball team together and would sail on Alan’s boat to bond. Alan said, “This guy was like an older brother all along. We’d go skin diving;

I’d be making noise in the water, splashing around, he’d be teaching me how to do it right. He always came out of the water with a bigger string of fish. And I had the smallest.”Eventually, Walter became curious about his past and used DNA-matching websites to learn more about his ancestry.

They gave him a subscription to ancestry.com after his older daughter pushed him to try it. “When we received the findings back, it was determined that Alan wasn’t only my best friend, but he was also my brother,” Walter explained.

Walter related their story to Steve Harvey. “I had a younger brother who died when he was 19, so I never got nieces or nephews,” he explained. It was and continues to be an overwhelming experience.

I’m not sure how long it will take me to recover from this emotion. This is the most perfect Christmas present I could ever ask for.” In the video below, you can see Alan and Walter’s incredible story of friendship that developed into brothers.