A year ago, Robert Mackenzie met his 84-year-old birth mother for the first time.

The emotional reunion was caught on video, which was filmed by Mackenzie’s wife. Carrying yellow flowers and a box from Tim Hortons, Mackenzie is seen in the video knocking on a green apartment door. When it opens, he is greeted by an elderly woman who appears to be smiling and giggling. Mackenzie says “hi mom” and the pair embrace.

“I’m shaking,” Mackenzie says, while the woman says “I’m shaking too.”

Mackenzie was adopted at nine-months-old. He told CTV News Toronto that his adopted parents used to tell him he was a “chosen child,” which made him feel special.

“I was always told I was adopted,” he said. “It was always on my mind.”

At the age of 32, Mackenzie’s adopted father told him that his last name was “George” and handed him his adoption papers.

“When my son was born, my adopted father said you might want to name your son after your original name,” Mackenzie said. “I went, I had an original name?”

The 64-year-old said he always knew he wanted to find out where he was from, but felt no need to seriously search for his birth parents until his adopted family passed away.

“I didn’t actually look really hard until after my adopted parents passed away, because I grew up in a really nice home, very happy, everything was great. I wasn’t in need, but I still had that yearning to do it.”

Mackenzie said that his children helped him search the Internet and old newspapers, looking for a clue that would match their father with the name of a woman listed on his adoption papers.

Two Christmases ago, Mackenzie’s daughter gave him an AncestryDNA kit and after submitting a sample, he was connected with a possible third cousin with the same last name.

“It was like ding, ding, ding, the lights went off, bingo—we’ve got something here.”

The family reached out to the match, who said she didn’t recognize the name of the woman he was searching for. She asked her father in Nova Scotia, who in turn asked his 78-year-old uncle, who then called his 83-year-old sister.

In that phone call, Frances Miller revealed to her brother a secret that she’d kept for more than half a century. That she had a baby and gave it away.

“Nobody knew,” Miller told CTV News Toronto. “In my family, my mother, nobody. I had to do it that way.”

“I had no place to go with a baby. I was working. I had just come to Toronto and I had no place to go. I just had a room.”

Mackenzie called Miller on the phone and told her that he believed he was her son. In audio of the phone call, Miller can be heard saying “you finally found me.”

“It was quite a moment,” Miller said.

The pair decided to meet shortly after. Mackenzie lived in Orillia and Miller resided in Lindsay, only an hour distance from one another.

“I knocked on the door here for the very first time and said ‘Hi, I’m your son,” Mackenzie said. “We had a good greeting and a lot of tears and it was awesome.”

“It was lovely,” Miller said. “We had a nice visit.”

Miller and Mackenzie have spoken almost every other day since their reunion last year.

“I got a big family now,” Miller said. “It grew pretty fast.”

With files from CTV News Toronto's Scott Lightfoot