Nathan Hughes and Elaine Pilsner get acquainted after their first meeting at Burcham Park, 200 Indiana St., on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016.

It took more than three decades for Nathan Hughes to realize he’d been cheated.

He knew he had a daughter named Elaine, and he knew she was living in Germany. But that’s about all he knew, and he never dreamed he’d have the opportunity to meet her.

“It was just so far out of the realm of anything that was possible,” he said.

But an email Hughes received in January changed that. It was from producers of a popular German TV show called “Vermisst,” or “Missing,” which seeks to reunite relatives who have been torn apart by fate.

A film crew for the German TV show Vermisst records the first meeting of Elaine Pilsner, of Kalenborn, Germany, with her father, Nathan Hughes, of Lawrence, on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016 at Burcham Park, 200 Indiana St.

Elaine had contacted the show in hopes that the producers could track down her father, and in just a few days, Hughes would have the opportunity to meet her for the first time.

‘A charming backwoods hick’

Hughes, who now works as a freelance designer with Theatre Lawrence, was born in Greer, S.C. He met his first wife, Gabriella, while he was serving in the Army.

“Evidently I was a charming backwoods hick at 20, and I got a beautiful woman to marry me and come here,” he said.

But when Gabriella got pregnant, she decided to go home to Germany.

“I was kinda too young to do anything; I didn’t know what to do, or that I really needed to do anything,” Hughes said. “… I think Gabby decided to go back to Germany mostly because her mother was there, and a woman needs the support of her mother to have her first child — as far as I know. I don’t know, I’ve never had one.”

Hughes said he drove Gabriella to the airport in Miami, Fla., where they shared an amicable goodbye.

“I was kind of under the impression at the time that she would be coming back, but she never did,” he said. “After about a year, I kinda got the idea that she wasn’t going to be back.”

‘The most wonderful thing in the world’

Life went on. Hughes moved to Lawrence in 1997 and lives with his wife, Darlene. He said they’re not poor, but he never had an extra $5,000 lying around to spend a week in Germany and meet his daughter, Elaine.

“I really didn’t have any hope of ever meeting my daughter until I got the email from the television network,” Hughes said. “… It just so happens that this kind of fairy tale thing fell from the sky into my lap.”

Hughes said he was never really close to many of his family members, and he thought Elaine deserved better.

“She deserves to know who her grandmother was; who her grandfather was; who her father is; that I turned out to be sort of successful,” he said.

Hughes said he comes from “kind of a family of hillbillies,” but he was the first of them to graduate college.

Lawrence resident Nathan Hughes, left, is interviewed by the crew of the German TV show Vermisst, or Missing, Sunday afternoon, Jan. 10, 2016, at Theatre Lawrence, 4660 Bauer Farm Drive.

“So our family’s moving up, and hopefully she gets those genes,” he said, prior to meeting Elaine. “Things like that I wanna tell her, so she knows who she is.”

Hughes said the TV show was making a dream come true for him.

“I think it’s just the most wonderful thing in the world. I wish I could do it for people,” he said. “If I was Bill Gates, that’s what I would do for a living.”

‘She looks just like her mother’

Hughes arranged to meet with producers of “Vermisst” for an initial interview on Jan. 10 at Theatre Lawrence, 4660 Bauer Farm Drive. There, producers told him he’d soon have the chance to meet Elaine.

And on Jan. 12, they did meet. The producers brought Elaine to Burcham Park, at 200 Indiana St. Pieces of ice floated down the Kansas River that day, and temperatures barely rose above freezing.

Nathan Hughes and Elaine Pilsner get acquainted after their first meeting at Burcham Park, 200 Indiana St., on Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2016.

Elaine Pilsner, 31, of Kalenborn, Germany, didn’t know what to expect — the “Vermisst” producers hadn’t told her they had found her father. But the TV crew captured the moment as three decades of mystery dissolved.

“I’m happy,” Pilsner said. “My life is perfect now.”

Hughes echoed the sentiment, and a newfound fatherly pride visibly filled his eyes as he looked at his only child.

“She looks just like her mother did,” he said.

Father and daughter had the opportunity to spend a couple of days getting to know each other before Pilsner had to return to Germany.

As people across America geared up for the Super Bowl on Sunday, an audience of 5 million Germans were expected to watch Hughes and Pilsner’s story unfold in the new episode of “Vermisst.”

Hughes said he’s still not sure why Gabriella, who is still living in Germany, never came back to the United States with his daughter.

“I got cheated; frankly, I’m starting to understand that I got cheated,” Hughes said. “… It’s all for the best because (Elaine) had a better life over there than I would’ve been able to give her over here.”