Rita Wilson’s father kept a major secret from his wife and children for decades.
The “Til You’re Home” artist opened up about the moment she learned that her father had a secret second family.
Rita Wilson’s Family Secret
Wilson appeared on the Wednesday, April 22, episode of the “How to Fail” podcast, where she spilled her family’s deepest secret.
“So, I did this show. You know it, it’s an English show. ‘Who Do You Think You Are?'” Wilson began. “Usually in those genealogy shows, they go back many, many generations. But what they found with my dad was that his story was so shocking and unusual that they stuck with his story.”
She went on to say that she traveled to her father’s home country of Bulgaria, where she was taken to “their Hall of Records.”
“And that day I have a driver, and this driver I’m just chatting with him and I said, ‘What’s your name?’ And he said, ‘Amile.’ And I said, ‘Oh, what a beautiful name. I’ve never known anybody named Amile,'” she recalled. “When we go to the place and we look at this book of records and it says, ‘Oh, now this is where your dad was living.'”
According to Wilson, the book also included a list of names of people who lived in the same house.
“I’m kind of trying to figure this out. And they said, ‘Well, your dad was married.’ I said, ‘What?’ Yes, he was married and he had a child.”
Wilson’s father, Allan Wilson, welcomed a baby boy with his first wife, Alice, Wilson learned. Tragically, Allan’s wife passed away three days after giving birth due to complications with the delivery.
The baby, named Amile, who was born on December 26, lived for four months before he passed away due to an infection.
“I can’t imagine. They were so poor. It was right after the war. It was Bulgaria,” she explained. “I don’t know how they would have afforded formula or something, but I’m sure they made ways. I mean, he didn’t die from starvation. He died from an infection.”
Wilson continued, “But this is where it gets weird…My sister’s firstborn child was born on December 26th, and my youngest son was born on December 26th. And I think of my dad all of those years celebrating all those birthdays and knowing that he had a child born on December 26th, Amile, who passed away.”
Allan Wilson’s Death
The “Runaway Bride” actress, who has been married to actor Tom Hanks since 1998, lost her father on March 6, 2009.
“He never said anything to us. I wish I could have talked to him about that,” she said during her Wednesday podcast episode. “They kept things so private. This is another thing about privacy. You know, there’s no word for privacy in the Greek language. Really?”
She described her father as “an extraordinary man.”
“He escaped communist Bulgaria. He escaped a labor camp. He got on a freighter ship to get a job so he could come to America,” she said through tears. “He jumped ship when he got to America. He got a job as a barback in New York and worked his way up to being a bartender. And he supported a family. He bought a house. He never had debt in his life. He and my mom were married for 59 years. And they were an incredible couple and incredible, incredible parents.”
