Paralympian believed she had no birth family — until a Ukrainian woman froze when her name was announced on TV
Oksana Masters spent most of her life believing she had been abandoned, but the truth surfaced years later in a way that no one could have predicted.
Paralympic champion Oksana Masters recently shared one of the most surprising moments of her life in an interview posted on Instagram by Graham Bensinger’s podcast account, @indepthwithgrahambensinger, with the full conversation available on his YouTube channel. In the discussion, Masters described how she spent most of her life believing she had been abandoned and would never know what happened to her biological family. The truth, however, surfaced years later in a way that no one could have predicted.
Masters explained during the interview that the discovery happened after she competed at the 2014 Winter Paralympics in Sochi, where she won a silver medal in cross-country skiing. Ukrainian television aired a segment about her life story, explaining that she had been born in Ukraine, placed in an orphanage, and later adopted by an American mother. That broadcast ended up reaching her birth mother, who happened to be in the kitchen. "My birth mom is doing dishes in the back and hears a loud noise, because she drops all the dishes," she said.
When her brother asked what had happened, their mother told them that before the rest of the children were born, she had once had another daughter. Doctors had warned her parents that the baby would not survive because of severe medical complications. "And so that was the best life for me. To give me a chance at life was to give me away to the government," she shared. Even in that moment, her mother tried to hold onto a connection. "She said, 'If I cannot be her mother, I'm going to give something of myself.' And that's how I got my name," she said.
What Masters did not know for most of her life was that her parents later tried to reverse that decision and attempted to return to the orphanage to bring their daughter home. When they arrived, however, they were told that the child had already died. They tried more than once to go back for her before eventually being told to stop coming. "She thought I was dead the whole time until she heard this story on the news in Sochi of my first medal," Masters explained.
Masters admitted that learning the full story later forced her to rethink how she had viewed her past for so long. "I felt so guilty for being so mad at them for something that I didn't even know. Then I started thinking from their perspective," she said. She also said, "I can't imagine giving away a child you never wanted to give away. And the only way you find out that they're still alive after you were told that they were dead is through the news."
Research shows that many adopted adults eventually search for answers about their biological families, especially after major life milestones. A study examining more than 1,400 international adoptees in the Netherlands found that about 32% had actively searched for their birth parents as adults, often motivated by questions about identity, family history, or unresolved childhood narratives.
Masters’ early life had already been shaped by difficult circumstances long before that discovery. As highlighted in a post shared by @femalequotient, she was born in Ukraine in 1989, just three years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, with multiple radiation-related birth defects. She spent the first seven years of her life moving between orphanages where she experienced severe neglect, malnutrition, and abuse.
At age seven, she was adopted by Gay Masters, a single American mother who brought her to the US, where she later underwent multiple surgeries and eventually became a double amputee. As a teenager, she discovered adaptive rowing, which launched a Paralympic career that has since produced multiple medals across sports, including rowing, cross-country skiing, biathlon, and cycling, with a historic seven-medal performance at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games and another medal at the Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympics.
You can follow In Depth with Graham Bensinger (@indepthwithgrahambensinger) on Instagram for more podcasts.
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