Rickey Smiley, the comedian, radio host and Birmingham native, has announced that he has 5-year-old twin daughters.

Smiley, 56, has known the girls their whole lives but said he only recently learned that he is their father, according to news reports.

“When I tell you that’s the first time I saw the sun again,” Smiley said in an interview on the Smitty and Dee Show podcast, “during that dark hour, the sun came back out.”

In 2023, Smiley’s 32-year-old son, Brandon, died from a drug overdose.

Smiley spoke of his religious faith and how it helped him through the death of his son. He said it took a full year for the news of his son’s death to sink in. It was around that time that he heard of his paternity of the girls.

“Right before the one-year anniversary of my son’s death,” Smiley said in the interview on the Smitty and Dee Show, “I found out I have a 5-year-old, identical twin beautiful daughters.”

Smiley said that he received a phone call from an ex-girlfriend, now a friend, who found out through court proceedings that they were Smiley’s daughters and not another man’s.

The girls had been a regular presence at his grandson’s birthday parties, he said.

“On their fifth birthday, I went into their house as their father,” he said.

He brought flowers and balloons, he said, and sent cake. He redecorated a room and restored the sandbox and trampoline at his house.

Smiley is known as a comedian, radio personality, actor and TV host.