Andréa McBride was a 16 year old living in foster care in New Zealand when she got a phone call from her biological dad in Alabama. He told her he was dying of cancer and wanted to do one last thing before passing: connect her to another daughter he had — her sister, Robin.
In the 17 years since that fateful call, Andréa and Robin have not only met, but in 2005, they founded The McBride Sisters Wine Company, the largest Black-owned wine company in the United States — and they did it without any seed money from investors.
Andréa said the aforementioned phone call was the first time she’d spoken to her dad in six years.
“The phone rang, and I picked it up, and the person on the other end of the phone, said, ‘Hey, Andréa, it’s your dad.’ And I definitely lost my breath,” Andréa recalled.
Her estranged dad shared his terminal diagnosis of stomach cancer and how he wanted to use his remaining energy to help her find Robin. He died seven months later, before he was able to find Robin (he’d loss touch with her after divorcing her mother).
But he did connect Andréa to his family beforehand and she traveled to his home state of Alabama to attend his funeral, during which family members vowed to fulfill his dying wish.
“It was crazy and awful and amazing sort of all at the same time. It was all the feels,” she said. “Losing our father, he was one of 12, meeting family and a lot of people that I’d never seen before but looked a lot like me. It was amazing. They were all just really focused on helping to try and find Robin.”
Andréa never doubted their intentions or efforts, but she did think their goal was unrealistic.
“I left there and had grown up in pretty tough circumstances, so didn’t really hope too much about it,” Andréa said. “It was just kind of like one thing in my mind was like, OK, yeah, yeah. But like, what are the chances we’re going to find this person out in the world?”
Andréa didn’t visit her family in Alabama again until two years later. By then, the family had been looking for Robin for five years and doubled down on their efforts after finding Andréa. The family had been sending letters to every Robin McBride in the phone book until finally one made it to their intended recipient in Monterey, California. Robin called the enclosed number, coincidentally, during Andréa’s time in Alabama. Their aunt answered and, after praising God, immediately handed the phone to Andréa so the sisters could talk for the first time.