Singer Joni Mitchell's Vancouver-based manager, who played a central role in the recent reunion between the folk icon and her long-lost child, says his phone lines have been humming with calls from reporters around the world.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Sam Feldman from his Granville Island office.

"Everyone from Larry King to Barbara Walters has called. It's incredible -- the phones haven't stopped all day. I think it shows you what happens when you have an artist as respected as Joni involved in such a compelling human interest story."

Feldman and his talent management partner, Steve Macklam, were instrumental in bringing Mitchell and the daughter she gave up for adoption 32 years ago, Toronto-based model and actor Kilauren Gibb, together after a lifetime of separation.

"Macklam took the call from (Gibb) weeks ago and we wanted to make sure everything was legitimate before it went any further," said Feldman.

"Joni's in the middle of recording an album and we certainly wanted to protect her from any (false claimant). We wanted to make sure there was a balance in the way it was handled."

Mitchell told the media about the search for her daughter last year and the story immediately caught public imagination.

When Feldman's office heard from Gibb in March and felt the claim to be sincere, they relayed the information to Mitchell, who asked to see baby pictures of her alleged progeny.

When the faxed photographs matched Mitchell's own, she sent Gibb an invitation for a rendezvous at her Los Angeles home.

On March 13, Gibb flew to California with her three-year-old son, Marlin, for a 19-day visit with Mitchell.

"It was very comfortable," Gibb said. "Very natural. I immediately got the feeling that I was home, that we belonged together."

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times Tuesday, Mitchell admitted she took a gamble when she gave up her daughter for adoption.

The 53-year-old singer recalled the hardships of being poor, pregnant and unmarried in the 1960s in Canada.

"The main thing at the time was to conceal it," she told the Times. "The scandal was so intense. A daughter could do nothing more disgraceful. It ruined you in a social sense. You have no idea what the stigma was. It was like you murdered somebody."

The reunion with her daughter "counteracts the ugliness at the beginning," Mitchell said.

Mitchell told her only other interview, the London Daily Express, that finding her daughter was "the peak experience of my life."

The newspaper quoted Gibb as saying she didn't care who her mother was: "I wouldn't care if my mother was a crazy bag lady in the streets or the Queen of England."

But Gibb, who's living on student loans while studying desktop publishing at Toronto's George Brown College, says if having a famous mother can open doors, she won't complain.

"If it works for me, I'd be quite happy," she said. "But I don't have any expectations. I didn't come into this with expectations. I just wanted to find my mom."

Gibb has modelled, acted in commercials, been a movie extra, studied piano, loves photography and is a talented amateur painter.

Gibb said she suspected Mitchell was her birth mother after she surfed the Internet looking for famous Canadian folksingers in February.

Apparently, Gibb was told by the Children's Aid Society that her natural mother "was a successful Canadian folksinger."

When she saw Joni Mitchell's face staring out of her computer screen, Gibb knew the long search for her birth mother was over.

She found 14 points of comparison -- blue eyes, blond hair, long legs, high cheekbones -- all suggesting more than a coincidental link between the two.

Toronto photographer Brad McMath, who believes he is Gibb's father, says he too would like to meet her. The 56-year-old Toronto man says he met Mitchell at an art school in Calgary in the '60s but says he hasn't seen her for "years and years."

McMath says he wants to introduce his eight-year-old son Morgan to his half-sister and to meet Gibb's son.

Gibb didn't find out she was adopted until she was 27. Her adopted parents, retired teachers David and Ida Gibb, didn't want to tell her at first because they didn't want her to feel like an outsider.

Gibb said she plans to keep her feet firmly planted on the ground and continue living in Toronto.