Ally Shapiro Opens up About Realizing She Wasn't Related to Her Half-Siblings
Jill Zarin's daughter's road to finding her biological father and siblings has been filled with many plot twists.
Ally Shapiro has definitely experienced some significant family revelations over the years. She first inadvertently learned that her father, Steven Shapiro, was not her biological father, back in her early 20s, and discovered that her mom, The Real Housewives of New York City alum Jill Zarin, and Steven had used a sperm donor to conceive her two decades earlier.
As if that realization wasn't enough, the story becomes even more twisted: After finding who she thought were her half-siblings from the sperm donor on a donor registry site, she then learned they weren't actually related to her at all. Ally received a 23&Me message from another man, who found that he was a 52% genetic match — and it turned out that he was Ally's biological father. This meant that Ally had spent years communicating with her supposed half-siblings, only to learn they weren't actually related — the clinic had mixed up the sperm donors, and the sperm donor Steven and Jill had chosen, based on his physical characteristics being similar to Steven, wasn't actually used to conceive Ally.
Ally told Page Six she had a "gut feeling" something was off all those years, despite her communication with who she believed to be her half-siblings.
“I think if I had a deeper connection, I would have been gutted,” she explained, but, “I felt like I’d been lying to them all these years.”
Luckily, Ally was able to find half-sisters through her biological sisters and has formed bonds with them. She has yet to meet her biological father and has only communicated with him via email.
“Because of what happened, I’m a little more hesitant,” she told Page Six. As she explained on Heather McDonald's podcast, Juicy Scoop with Heather McDonald, "I'm just not in a rush. I think a lot of this I didn't really have a say in. I didn't have a say in who my mom chose and didn't choose to be the sperm donor. I didn't have a say in when I was told or how I was told or who my siblings are now, and I feel like now I can choose now when I meet this guy, and relationships and boundaries... I think I want to meet him when the timing is right for both of us."
