Just before Father’s Day in 2017, Jyll Justamond, 40, got to hug her dad for the very first time.

She had spent a lifetime wanting to do so. He, on the other hand, never even knew he had a daughter.

Al Annunziata, 63, got a surprising Facebook message on April 3rd of that year. It was a woman wanting to know if he could be her father.

Justamond had spent years looking for him after finding out that the people who raised her were actually her grandparents.

“My biological mother was 18 when she had me and for whatever the reason, felt that she wasn’t capable or old enough to raise me,” Justamond told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “She asked her stepfather and mother to raise me and I didn’t know I wasn’t their child. I found out when I was 10.”

She grew up thinking her biological mother was her half-sister. But the two didn’t have much contact.

“It was bizarre and I tried to contact her and have a relationship with her when I found out, but she was not ready or willing at the time.”

Jastamond’s mother Linda didn’t give her much to go on when it came to tracking down her biological father.

“She told me it could be this guy Al and she said, ‘When I met him, he was bartending at this bar called Neary’s and it was essentially a one night stand. A first name and the bar he worked in — that was all I had to go on. That, and he was Italian.”

She found one man she thought might fit the bill, but a paternity test ruled him out.

The year she turned 40 she decided to look again in earnest, this time harnessing the power of social media.

Neary’s no longer existed, but there was a Facebook group dedicated to natives of the town it was located in – Palisades Park, New Jersey. Someone suggested she get in touch with the former owner, Don Neary.

“I said, ‘I know this is crazy, but do you happen to know a guy named Al that worked or you in 1976, 1977?'” Justamond asked him.

That’s when he gave her the name Al Annunziata.

Justamond’s mother insisted he wasn’t the father, but Annunziata had always had a gut feeling that Linda’s baby had been his.

“She wasn’t my girlfriend and we weren’t really romantically involved and I guess it was just two young people who got together,” the Cliffside Park, New Jersey resident told GMA. “Of all the years this has been going on, it’s been out there as a burning question. It was never resolved. When you’re young and you don’t know, you take things at face value. I believed her mother.”

So when he got Jyll Justamond’s Facebook message, he was eager to reply and agree to a paternity test.

The results showed a 99.9966% probability that he is the woman’s biological father – and both of them were thrilled at the news.

“I’ve never experienced a happier person in my life,” Justamond said. “He was so excited. He was like, ‘I’m a brand-new father!'”

The two arranged to meet in person in New Jersey and in June of 2017, just before Father’s Day, Justamond flew out from her home in Colorado. She walked into the Italian restaurant where they agreed to meet and cameras were there to chronicle their first glimpse of each other.

The thrilled dad went out of his way to make their meeting special, walking in with balloons and gifts for his “new” 40-year-old daughter.

They wrapped one another in a big hug and began catching up on 40 years of stories, finding out that they had much in common.

“It’s really wild that you didn’t raise somebody but yet they’re very much like you,” the “new dad” told GMA. “She’s just a really sweet, caring woman. This just the beginning. I’ll never let her out of my life, ever.”

It was a happy ending for the two as they made plans to spend Christmas together in Las Vegas where Justamond would get to meet her aunt for the first time as well.

To get a glimpse of their sweet reunion, be sure to scroll down below.

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Source: CBS New York via YouTube, ABC News – GMA