Oh, brother!

Just after 8 p.m. on a December night in 2019, Robin Rinaldi-Esta composed a private Facebook message, took a deep breath, and pressed “send.”

“I wrote, ‘I think you are my brother. You look exactly like my Dad,’” remembers Rinaldi-Esta.

Through a mutual Facebook friend, Rinaldi-Esta noticed a person by the name of Michael Carmine Rinaldi—and noted the similarity to her father’s name, Carmine Rinaldi.

When Robin’s husband, Dan Esta, saw Rinaldi’s photo, he enlarged the photo on the computer screen. “Robin,” he said, “who does this look like?”

“Oh my God, that looks like my father!” exclaimed Rinald-Esta. Since her father passed away five years previous, Rinaldi-Esta could no longer ask him, but the thought of reaching out to this familiar-looking stranger was intimidating, too. “For a long time, I was afraid to contact [Michael] because you never know how people are going to react,” she said. “They might not want to be bothered.”

After Rinaldi-Esta messaged Michael Rinaldi, she tried to prepare herself for how to handle the outcome. On one hand, a response could be life-changing. Even worse, what if he decided not to answer?

But Michael Rinaldi did answer. Texting back and forth, they both agreed they were, in fact, half-brother and half-sister — both children of Carmine Rinaldi.

By piecing together details from their past, they figured out that their father had been married to Michael’s mother, had three children (Michael has two sisters), then divorced Michael’s mother. He left the family when Michael was only 11, and went on to marry Robin’s mother and raise Robin. She grew up never realizing her father had any other children.

“In those days, they didn’t talk about divorce and all that stuff,” says Rinaldi-Esta. Everything was a big secret. The kids weren’t privy to all that information.”

At the time of this story’s printing, Michael Rinaldi was unavailable to speak to Sun Day as he was caring for an ill relative, but his wife Ruth Renaldi remembers the night the Facebook message arrived in her husband’s inbox.

“He read the message from Robin at 9:30 at night,” remembers Ruth. “Then neither one of us could sleep!”

‘You’ve gotta be kidding’

As Michael and Robin got to know each other, they learned that both of them had long careers as realtors, just like their father. In fact, though they never worked for the same real estate company at the same time, they had come across each other through real estate deals.

“I talked to him on the phone a couple times, doing some deals, and I’d say, ‘Are you sure we aren’t related?’ He’d say, ‘No,’ and we’d laugh. I’d say, ‘Do a good job at real estate, because it reflects on my name, too!’ I was in business in Cary/Crystal Lake, he was in Lake Zurich/Barrington. We had done business together, but it was always on the phone.”

The biggest shock came when Robin asked Michael where he lived. He told her Del Webb.

Robin was flabbergasted. “Get out of here,” she said in disbelief.

Ruth remembers that moment as well. “When [Robin] told us she lived in Del Webb, it’s like … you’ve gotta be kidding. I looked at the Del Webb directory and find out we’re living exactly a mile away. We’ve walked past their house!”

Since discovering each other, Robin and Michael have met in person several times, either in each other’s homes or at Jameson’s Charhouse.

“When I met him face to face, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him,” says Robin. “He walks like Dad, they both have a dimple in their chin. So much alike! It’s amazing.”

Ruth says meeting Robin has brought about a positive change in her husband.

“He always said he didn’t care where his father was, because his father left him when he was 11. As he got older, he thought, ‘I’ve become a good man—I don’t need to find him.’ Even though he said he didn’t want [to know about his Dad], it made a difference for [Robin] to reach out.”

Ruth believes Michael has gotten some closure now that Robin has been able to tell him things about their father that he didn’t know.

“I feel bad, because I had a dad and he didn’t,” says Robin. “I feel like he got cheated. But he tells me, ‘Don’t feel bad. It’s not your fault.’ He’s come to terms with it, I guess.”

“It’s so nice to know I have a brother,” says Rinaldi-Esta. “It feels so comfortable. I feel like I’ve known him forever.”

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