I was delighted this week when NBC announced the celebrities for the next season of Who Do You Think You Are?, the popular celebrity roots show (in case you missed it, Gwyneth Paltrow , Tim McGraw, Rosie O'Donnell, Steve Buscemi, Kim Cattrall, Lionel Richie, Vanessa Williams and Ashley Judd will be exploring their pasts). In anticipation of the new season, the paperback version of my companion book to the show (Who Do You Think You Are?: The Essential Guide to Tracing Your Family History) will become available on December 28th (for viewers who are inspired to dig into their own family histories).
If you take a look at the cover of this how-to book, you'll see that my name is given as Megan Smolenyak, and that tends to provoke a lot of questions. Because I've lived with the reality of being a Smolenyak by birth and by marriage (yes, that's how I wound up with the double moniker) for almost a decade now, I've become a bit blasé about it, but I was reminded again this week when a journalist queried me about it in an interview on an entirely unrelated topic. Not surprisingly, she posed the question I've frequently been asked: did I marry my cousin?
The answer to that question is included in this video. As a bonus, you'll get some ideas for playing with DNA to learn about your ancestry. And by the way, stay tuned for my next book where I'll address the question of whether you and your spouse might just be kissing cousins!