Woman tracks down long-lost mother; realises she married her own brother

Mumbai: A woman in Brazil went in search of her mother, who abandoned her as a baby, and discovered she has unknowingly married her own brother, as reported in the dailymail.co.uk.

The Brazilian couple, Adriana, 39, and her husband Leandro, 37, have been together for seven years and have a six-year-old daughter.

They spent their lives trying to find their respective mothers, both named Maria, thinking the mothers abandoned them when they were still babies.

But neither ever imagined - until recently - that the women they had both been searching for could have been the same person.

Adriana, who now works as a cosmetics saleswoman, hadn't seen her mother since she was one and was raised by her father.

Meanwhile, Leandro, working as a truck driver now, found out at the tender age of eight that his mother had abandoned him too, and the woman he was living with and calling his mother was actually his stepmother.

While Leandro stayed in his hometown in the state of Sao Paulo, southeast Brazil, Adriana moved away to work as a housemaid.

She was married for 15 years and had three children.

The couple met for the first time ten years ago after Adriana's marriage broke down and she moved back to her hometown, and they soon fell in love and moved in together.

Last month Adriana decided to contact a radio station in their town to ask for help, as she was unable to forget her mother. The radio station was able to reunite the two live on air.

At the end of the interview on Radio Globo's 'The Time Is Now' programme, which specialises in finding lost relatives, the mother revealed she also had a son named Leandro who didn't know her.

As it becomes clear that it is the same Leandro that she was married to, Adriana is heard weeping uncontrollably: 'I don't believe that you're telling me this. Leandro is my husband,' she sobs.

At the end of the interview she says: 'Now I'm scared to go home and find out that Leandro doesn't want me any more. I love him so much.'

Adriana and Leandro - who never married legally – on Thursday told Radio Globo that they would stay together, despite the fact that they are actually brother and sister.

'Only death is going to separate us. Of course it would have been different if we had known all this before, but we didn't and we fell in love. We thought it was funny that both our mothers had the same name, but it is a common name so we just thought it was a coincidence. At first we were really knocked by it all. But we had a family meeting and told everyone that we are going to stay husband and wife, whatever anyone might think,' says Andriana.

The couple said they don't blame their mother for leaving them, have spoken with her a number of times since and plan to meet up soon.