Ammon News - While many families came together over Easter weekend, two sisters in Kansas City had the reunion of a lifetime.

Melisa Hergert came with her aunt, Deb Witig, to the airport to wait for a woman she had never met, but with whom she has a deep connection.

"It's been very emotional and very exciting," said Hergert.

She was less than one year old when her mother gave her sister, Amy Leonard, up for adoption.

"I wasn't really expecting that I would ever get to meet her," she said.

But in the fall, her aunt decided to start searching.

"It was just this missing piece to our family puzzle," said Witig.

As it turned out, Leonard was doing a search of her own.

"I've always been curious," said Leonard. "I thought this was the time to do it if I'm going to do it, and so I started kind of piecing together some information and realized I had siblings."

Once she learned about Hegert, she knew what she had to do.

"I couldn't not do it," said Leonard. "I had to reach out. Life is too short."

The sisters talked to each other on the phone a few times first.

"From visiting with Amy on the phone, we have a connection and we have a lot of similarities," said Hegert.

Then, after more than 50 years, they met face-to-face for the first time.

"It's very overwhelming, exciting," said Leonard. "There are absolutely no words for it, just pure joy."

"It's everything I thought it would be," Hegert said.

Now that they're reunited, the sisters say they're just looking forward to spending time together and building a relationship.

Fortunately, the holiday weekend gave them plenty of opportunities.

"We all, turns out, like wine, so we're going to wineries," said Witig. "We're going to have Easter brunch on Easter morning!"

Local 12