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Arcadia, OK (KOCO) — Two sisters searching for more than 60 years for each other are now back together in Oklahoma.
Paula Parkhurst, who has owned and operated her own pumpkin patch in Arcadia for over a decade, always felt something was missing.
“I never knew who my birth family was,” she told KOCO. Parkhurst says after using Ancestry.com, she had a match with Jacque Reist, who she thought could be her cousin.
“I contacted her,” she said. “(I said,) ‘I think I might be related to you.
Would you be interested in talking to me? I think I might be your first cousin.
‘”Reist responded within a few hours.
“I said, ‘I am not your cousin, I’m your sister,'” Reist, who had prior knowledge to having a younger sister, said.
The two finally met face to face this summer. “I knew the moment I saw her we were blood-related,” Reist said. “There was no question. I didn’t need DNA to tell me.”
It wasn’t long after Parkhurst and Reist met that they started working together at the pumpkin patch, even coming up with ideas for the gift shop.
“Jars of jam and relishes and salsas, and pumpkin soup and quilt squares, all family recipes I didn’t know about,” Parkhurst said.
Reist says she drives from Texas every and now then to help out around the pumpkin patch.
“Just to work with you and to do something together is exciting,” Reist said to her sister.
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