The Unexpected Bond Between Julia Roberts and Martin Luther King Jr.

It may sound at first like MadLibs, but it’s apparently true. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King helped pay the hospital bill for Julia Roberts’s birth.

This is, actually, not new news, but if you never heard it before don’t feel too bad. The unearthed story has been blowing minds online for about a week and went double-viral on her recent birthday. The reminder originated on Twitter, when a fan posted a fun video edit of Roberts looking fab in the 80s and 90s with the caption “going to see mother today.” (The implication here being a trip to see Ticket to Paradise in theaters.) A quote tweet with the added “Martin Luther King Jr paying for her birth is still a little known fact that sends me” took off, with some wondering how they’d never heard about this, and others asking if it was true.

On Friday, which not-coincidentally was the Academy Award-winning actress’s 55th birthday, the internet came through with a video in which Roberts explained her literal origin story to Gayle King. The two spoke at an A&E Networks and History Channel “HISTORYTalks” event in Washington, D.C in late September of this year.

“Her research is very good,” Roberts mugged to the crowd, when King prompted her for the story. “The King family paid for my hospital bills.”

“Not my family,” Gayle King corrected. “Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta—did you guys know that about Julia Roberts?” the interviewer then asked the crowd, who all murmured “no.”

Roberts explained that while her parents couldn’t pay for the hospital bill, they did have a theater school in Atlanta. At the time, Coretta was having a rough time finding a local school that would accept her children, it being the South in the mid-1960s. But when Roberts’s mother took her call, she said, “sure, come on over.” As such, everyone became friends, and, when a financial emergency came, Julia’s parents were helped out of a jam.