Identical twins reunited after 38 years bonded over football, and now have the 'once in a lifetime' chance to see their favorite teams face off in the Super Bowl

• Identical twins Steven Tazumi and Tom Patterson were adopted by separate families at 2 years old.
• They reunited at 40 and spent the next 20+ years bonding over their commonalities — including a love of football.

Identical twins Steven Tazumi and Tom Patterson lived the vast majority of their lives without knowing one another.

But the decades they spent apart haven't stopped them from forging a fierce sibling rivalry that's coming to a head at this year's Super Bowl. The now-64-year-old brothers, who were adopted from a Japanese orphanage by separate American families when they were two years old, are diehard football fans with opposite allegiances for Sunday's big game.

As a young kid from a sports-loving family in Kansas, Patterson quickly fell in with the Kansas City Chiefs faithful. Tazumi, who grew up in the New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia, can't recall a time when he "didn't like the Eagles," he said a laugh.

Patterson, who logged into a Zoom interview with Insider wearing a red-and-yellow Chiefs jersey, took the opportunity to taunt his brother.

"But he doesn't have his jersey on because he knows who the winning team's going to be!" he said with a smirk.

"Eagles!" Tazumi shouted in response.

It would be the first of many brotherly barbs exchanged on the day. The twins are using their shared love of football — and their respective favorite franchises, which are now competing for the Lombardi Trophy — to make up for lost time.

"We haven't even thrown a football to each other, which I guess is a little crazy," Tazumi told Insider. "We missed out on 40 years of childhood."

The twins relied on miracles and happenstance to find one another after 38 years

Years after the boys landed in their respective homes in the United States, a fire broke out at the orphanage where they'd last seen one another. The blaze destroyed all of the documents stored in the facility, seemingly crushing Tazumi and Patterson's chances of reconnecting later in life.

For all of their childhood and most of their adolescence, neither Tazumi nor Patterson was aware that the other existed. But when they were both 16 years old, their families sat them down and broke the news that they each had an identical twin.

"And I said, 'Well, I hope he's as happy as I am,'" Tazumi recalled. "And then I pretty much left it alone."

Patterson didn't have any way of confirming that his brother was still alive. He noted that they were both severely underweight during their time at the orphanage, adding that it was a miracle either of them survived.

Though neither twin felt compelled to find the other during their teenage years, Tazumi had a change of heart in 1998, when he was 40 years old. He was years into his career as a personal trainer when a client, who was also a twin, convinced him to search for his brother.

Tazumi said he had limited information about the family that adopted his brother and had narrowed down the search to last names beginning with "P." He and his client then "arbitrarily wrote some letters out."

Tazumi didn't expect much to come of it. But then one of the notes found its way to Patterson's dad, who gave it to his son. Patterson called the number provided and was met with skepticism.

The two sides went back-and-forth over how to prove Patterson was truly Tazumi's twin. Eventually, they settled on sending a fax.

"So I sent 'em a fax," Patterson recalled. "And they said, 'It's Steve! It's Steve except for the mustache!'"

"So that's where it all began," he said with a laugh. "Then Steve's client flew us out to Philly, and that's the first time I met my brother at the age of 40."

The twins bonded over their many commonalities, including a shared love of football

Sure, they had the same face, the same genetic makeup, and the same first two years of life. But at first, Tazumi and Patterson — who grew up on opposite sides of the country — weren't sure whether they'd really have much in common.

As it turns out, the pair had unknowingly led parallel lives. Tazumi was a competitive bodybuilder and owned a pair of gyms in New Jersey. Patterson, too, had a passion for fitness and owned a bodybuilding facility in Liberal, Kansas.

Once, before he and Tazumi had reconnected, Patterson recalled a client coming into his gym with a picture of a lifter who had qualified for the Olympic Games. Their resemblance was uncanny, he said, but it would only occur to him years later that the man he was looking at was his twin.

"So we act the same, talk the same, and my wife says think the same," Tazumi said.

They don't think exactly the same on football, but they do exude similar devotion to their respective teams. When asked about their smack-talking tendencies, Tazumi confirmed that he engages in some good old-fashioned taunting from time to time.

Despite their brotherly bouts, the twins have grown closer due in part to the sport they both love. Though they live some 1,500 miles apart, the twins bridge the gap by talking football every morning.

"We wake up and start watching the news," Patterson said. "We watch 'Good Morning Football' and talk about it and talk about our favorite players."

They now get to watch their teams go head-to-head in the Super Bowl

The twins attended an Eagles versus Chiefs game together at Kansas City's Arrowhead Stadium back in 2017. The visitors came out on top, much to Patterson's chagrin, but he contends that the Chiefs are much improved since then.

Still, Patterson admitted that he has a small soft spot for his twin's Eagles. Tazumi even went as far as calling the Chiefs his second team. And when they've watched games together in the past, each twin has been willing to wear his brother's team's garb.

But there will be no brotherly mercy come Sunday.

The pair have waged a $25 bet — "big spenders," Patterson joked — over the outcome of Super Bowl LVII. If Kansas City comes out on top, Patterson says he'll win the perfect amount of money to invoke head coach Andy Reid's signature celebration: enjoying "a great big cheeseburger after the win."

Plus, he'd earn bragging rights for life.

Both men and their wives plan to host viewing parties at their homes on Sunday, unless the twins can find their way to Glendale, Arizona, to watch the Super Bowl in-person.

"We are still hoping maybe to get to Arizona — if not for the game just to be there for all the celebrations," Patterson said. "I can't imagine what it is like there with all those Chief and Eagles fans."

But even "if we don't get there," he added, "it is still a once in a lifetime experience and we are so thankful for it."