TODAY viewers are adopting a teen who pleaded for his family on-air

A teenager has found a forever home after his TODAY appearance sparked an “instant” connection with his prospective adoptive parents.

In the fall of 2020, married couple Matt Bungo and Joe French were watching a TODAY with Hoda Kotb segment about teens in foster care who were hoping to be adopted.

One of those children was a 16-year-old boy named Samuel who had spent the previous six years in foster care. Samuel told Hoda that he longed for a family that was “warm, whole, and just together.”

Bungo and French considered surrogacy but were struck by a statistic reported by TODAY: Only 3 percent of adoptive parents preferred children over 13.

“I paused the TV and said, ‘Come in here. I think this may be our child,” French recalled the conversation with Bungo in a June 14 TODAY segment on which the entire family appeared. “And we both watched it and watched it on loop several times. There was an instant familiarity – he reminded me of Matt and then his accent was so familiar.

The couple just knew that Samuel was their child.

French recalled three questions Hoda and her former fiancé, Joel Schiffman, asked themselves before adopting their daughters Haley Joy in 2017 and Hope Catherine in 2019: “Do we have time?” Do we have the money? Do we have love? They said yes, yes, yes.

At the time, Samuel was living in an all-boys residential community and met Bungo and French via FaceTime. He was cautious, having experienced two potential adoptions that never came to fruition.

“Honestly, I had given up hope,” Samuel told TODAY on June 14. “You could just tell they were nice people. They seemed real.

French and Bungo adopted Samuel, then 17, in July 2021.

Bungo remembers Samuel's arrival at their house.

“He just had a trash bag with two shirts in it,” he said. “It was really eye-opening to see how he lived before coming to us.”

Samuel, now a student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, told TODAY June 14 that until he met his parents, he wasn't close to many people. “It’s nice,” he said of his new relationships.

“A lot of people thought that two gay men adopting a child would be some kind of radical, progressive concept, but that’s not the case,” French says.

Bungo agreed, adding, “For these kids in foster care, they just need love and that's the one thing we can all give to someone.”

During their June 14 appearance, the family spoke with Hoda and TODAY co-host Jenna Bush Hager.

“It gave me a lot more certainty in my life,” Samuel said of his adoption. “Host families can be quite sneaky. They gave me the love I really needed as a child.

Samuel also delivered a touching Father's Day message to his two dads.

“I love you, I’m so grateful, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for us.”

This article was originally published on TODAY.com