5 decades after adoption, St. Louis man learns his father is a rock star

The first time Michael Goessling, who was adopted as an infant, spoke to his biological father he asked him what he did for a living.

Musician, said the man, who called himself “Mike.”

Still on the phone, and sitting in his car in his driveway, Goessling had already begun scouring the internet when Mike mentioned he was on tour and would be performing in St. Louis, where Goessling lives.

“And I’m looking, and the voice, and it all starts coming together,” Goessling recalled during a phone interview Thursday. “I just spit it out: ‘Are you Michael McDonald?’ He chuckled, and he said, ‘Yeah, I’m afraid so.’ ”

That initial conversation between father and son took place in May 2025. Goessling, 59, has had some time to get used to the idea that his father rose to fame as a soulful lead vocalist of the Doobie Brothers.

McDonald, 74, wrote in a memoir that he was in eighth grade when his girlfriend got pregnant with Goessling, and the couple was pressured to give him away. After the birth, McDonald dropped out of school to play music, moving through a series of bands, including a stint with Steely Dan, before joining the Doobie Brothers.

McDonald has also had a substantial career as a solo artist, including the 1982 hit, “I Keep Forgettin’ (Every Time You’re Near).”

For Goessling, the discovery still feels surreal. During a lifetime of wondering about his biological parents, he mostly longed to be able to tell them he had a good life thanks to the kind and loving couple who adopted him.

“I was always very, very grateful to my birth parents for the choices they made on my behalf and giving me a shot in this world,” he added.

But questions still lingered about his birth parents.

“I was certainly more prepared for perhaps, you know, Mike the retired schoolteacher or accountant or truck driver,” he said. “But certainly not Mike the five-time-Grammy-Award-winning Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Famer.”

For more than a year, the unexpected twist to Goessling’s adoption tale stayed mostly under the radar, until a friend of Goessling’s cousin reached out to a reporter he knew at KMOV, the St. Louis TV channel. It aired a news report this week.

McDonald did not respond to messages seeking comment Thursday.

Goessling was born in St. Louis, near where McDonald grew up. It turned out McDonald and his former girlfriend, who remained friends over the years, had spent some 30 years looking for their son.

McDonald’s younger son took an ancestry test, which showed he had a brother named Michael Goessling in St. Louis.

On May 6, 2025, Goessling received a letter in the mail from a lawyer representing his birth parents, asking if he would like to be put in touch with them.

Later that day, he spoke with his birth mother, who revealed little about McDonald, saying it was his story to share.

Father and son — who share the same first name by coincidence — spoke after Goessling and his birth mother got a chance to meet in person.

“He took a back seat until we had that opportunity,” Goessling said of McDonald.

Goessling, who supplies windows and doors for construction projects, calls his birth father “Mike,” and they meet when the musician is in St. Louis, he said. McDonald has been a doting grandfather to Goessling’s son, 16, and daughter, 13.

Goessling has long been an advocate for adoption. “What might come from this story and the attention it’s getting all of a sudden is that the adoption narrative gets elevated in this country a little bit more and gets celebrated,” he said.

When Goessling grew out his beard and hair during the COVID pandemic, people would tell him, “I love the whole Michael McDonald thing you got going on there,” he said. Despite the resemblance, he never imagined they were related.

Growing up, Goessling was “a music nut,” he said, and eventually wrote his own songs. Around age 12, he began to play acoustic guitar and still occasionally strums. He never performed for an audience but does sing his tunes for family.

“I never sought performing as a path, but I’ve always enjoyed it,” Goessling said. He added that his own music does not resemble McDonald’s polished, soft-rock approach.

“He’s on a level I could never aspire to,” he said. “I put him in, obviously as the rest of the world does, a whole other bracket.”

He was also a big Doobie Brothers fan and said he had seen McDonald in concert at least twice before learning he was his biological father.

“I remember distinctly the first time somebody pointed out a new Doobie Brothers song; it was ‘Takin’ It to the Streets,’” he recalled. McDonald had just been recruited by the band.

“I was an instant fan,” Goessling said.