Jill Zarin just revealed a shocking secret about her daughter – a secret that would certainly make for a jaw-dropping episode of The Real Housewives of New York.
Jill and her first husband, Steven Shapiro, conceived their daughter, Ally Shapiro using a sperm donor.
Zarin recently spilled the beans during the Juicy Scoop with Heather McDonald podcast, while she and Ally were both guests on the show.
Shapiro was Jill’s first husband before she married Bobby Zarin
Apparently, the two wanted to start a family, but Steven was met with infertility issues, so they decided to use a sperm donor – a secret they both planned to take to the grave.
However, the 56-year-old recounts that things didn’t go as planned.
For one, although they tried to choose a donor that had similar features to Shapiro, Ally ended up with blue eyes and was shorter than her dad.
Jill and Steven divorced when Ally was seven, and they both remarried soon after.
Ally tells the Story of how she heard the news
The 27-year-old says that one day, during her freshman year at college, she was using her Mom’s computer when an email popped up from her stepmom – who was then in the process of divorcing her dad.
The subject line read. “Question of the day: Why is Ally the fattest one in the Shapiro family?” and “Why does Ally have blue eyes and no one else does?”
Ally says the email was copied to everyone on her father’s side of the family except for her. At the time, the then-college student said she didn’t understand what was going on, and just assumed her stepmom was being mean.
Ally says, “I asked my mom why she emailed us, and what that meant and what was going on, and she sat me down.”
That’s when the former Bravo housewife called her ex-husband, and they both dropped the bomb on their daughter.
“We were never going to tell you like this, and we didn’t know when the right time was, but basically, your dad’s your dad, but you know that we had a difficult time having you, and we used a sperm donor,” Ally remembered.
“And I never in a million years would have thought that. Like, I had no inkling. Yeah, I had blue eyes, and I’m shorter than everyone else, but never would have guessed it at all.”
Ally wasn’t the only one who Jill and Steven kept the secret from. Jill’s parents were in the dark as well.
The former RHONY alum tells Heather how they responded when they heard the news.
“They were so mad!” Jill said. “I said, ‘Stephen and I tried to have Ally, and we couldn’t, so we used a sperm donor, no big deal!'”
She explained, however, that “this was many, many years ago … and in those days it was very early on in this whole sperm donor business. At the time, people said, ‘You just don’t say anything. Do the insemination and then have sex and pretend that’s how you got pregnant then.'”
Fortunately, the secret has not caused a rift in the mother-daughter relationship.
According to Ally, “I think I was shocked. I don’t think I was ever really mad. I was more just surprised; I was just so shocked that she kept this from me for so long.”