My parents, deceased, we’re both only children. When we host xmas eve dinner for my family, my entire family attends.
Apart from my mother’s cousins, there’s no one I know if. We may have relatives still living in Poland, but there’s no one alive in the states who would know. When my paternal grandmother died in 1972, that was the last tie to the old country.
My mom was my dad’s second wife, which didn’t sit well with all my dad’s relatives who were fundies who took “until death do us part” quite literally. This even though my dad divorced his first wife for promiscuous infidelity, and her conduct was scandalous enough that he got custody of all their children (who were grown by the time he remarried). When my dad was on his death bed they actually asked him to reconcile with his first wife before it was too late. So I have a huge tribe of half-brothers and sisters and cousins, and their children and at this point their grandchildren, whom I wouldn’t know from Adam if I met them on the street.
I spoke on the phone with my 6th cousin some years back, when he was doing genealogical research.
My (ordinary) cousin lives halfway around the world. Does that count?
There’s “know of” and “know”.
I’ve done a lot of genealogy and despite this the most distant relative I know is a 2nd cousin.
OTOH, I have found multiple links to European royalty so I “know of” Queen Liz and such who are xth cousins for a fairly large x. But I consider such things to be meaningless in terms of “knowing”.
OTOH, Mrs. FtG is ~6th cousin to Obama, which is cool.
If you get lax about how people are related, there are the non-standard cases such as my half-sibling’s half-sibling’s half-siblings and my 3 step-step-great grandchildren.
I connected with a fourth cousin thru ancestry.com.
When I came to work at my current employer many years ago, one of the people I met had a very unusual name, the same name as my great-grandmother’s maiden name. At the time I wondered if we might be related. He left the company a few months after I came to work, so I never had much of a chance to talk to him.
A few years ago, I started looking thru newspaper obits and genealogical sites to see if we were related, and, yep. He and my dad would have been third cousins. My g-g-grandfather had 14 children, and each of them had big farming families themselves, so there were probably thousands of descendants by the time I came around.
I’m in contact with some of my sister’s grandchildren, so I guess great-great-aunt.
My brother looks exactly like James Taylor, and we got to know the family members quite well at the beginning of his career. Never could figure out if it was a genetic connection or just plain coincidence. I wish DNA testing was available back then.
As a matter of fact, he is the ancestor of all four branches of the very extended (and prolific) family. The name itself was actually a nickname, hence perhaps its improbably baroque, you-must-be-joking string of consonants.
The most distant relative I know of might be a Russian immigrant who showed up in the 90s with my family’s last name. My grandmother was sure he was related somehow but I’m pretty suspicious. Other than at I know of the children and grandchildren of my parents first cousins and that’s it because my side of the family is very small. My wife has a ton of first cousins, but because there so many she’s never looked further into her own family tree than their children. I don’t think she cares about those removed cousins any more than I do.
I know a guy on Facebook who shares the same great-great-great grandfather (F.W. Schmidt of Galveston, who has a surprising web presence for someone who’s been dead for 133 years). That’s a 4th cousin, right?
In person, I know some of my great-great aunt’s children (they’re old as hell too), but I’m not sure what that particular relationship is.
I am close to a lot of people out to third and fourth cousins. For the most distant I would call that my cousin Vsevlod; a direct ancestor of his was the bother of a direct ancestor of mine around 1640 but got separated during the Great Schism. I forget the number but its pretty distant for someone I see at least a time or two every three years or so. My Dad, the person of his generation most into such stuff, had contact that didn’t link until further back than that.
I am seventh cousin to George W. Bush and his siblings. We are both descended from Dr. Abel Prescott of Concord, Massachusetts, who was born in 1718. We have never met or corresponded.
I’m aware of my dad’s cousins’ grandchildren. I think they are technically 2nd cousins once removed.
By the way, interesting factoid: if you have any European ancestry, you are descended from every European who had offspring (about 80%) who was alive 1000 years ago or further. So you are all descended from (for example) Charlemagne.
Works for those with any African ancestry, and South Asian ancestry too. You might have to go back a bit further to make it true for East Asian ancestry.
Grandpa Eddie is my 21x great grandfather. Hi cousin.
If you go far enough back, I suppose I have some relation to the earthworms I was digging up in the garden yesterday! 
Sticking to our species, I had relatives on both sides who did the geneology thing. On my mom’s side, the guy even self-published a book with purported lines of descent from Charlemagne, Lincoln… - Adam and Eve for all I know.
So if I wanted to, I could connect with all manner of cousins and such. But I’ve got 1st cousins I know of whom I have zero contact with. Being in contact with extended family has never been a big deal to me. My parents got married late, so all of our 1st cousins were much older than us growing up. Also very geographically dispersed. On the occasions we’ve met/communicated, it has pretty consistently been that we think each other fine folk, but since we hadn’t been in touch so long, we didn’t have any interest in trying to create a relationship based on nothing other than sharing some DNA.
My wife’s and my siblings all married and had kids close in time to us, and several of us lived nearby and saw each other often. So - with the assistance of social media and cheapo travel, hopefully my kids and their cousins will have closer relations than my generation.
I’ve done a lot of genealogy research, but have no idea as to who the most distant known relative might be. There are a large number of them out there, a lot of whom I’ve corresponded with in the course of my research. The only one I can state with certainty off the top of my head is a second cousin, once removed, although she died in 2017 at age 97. We corresponded regularly over the years. She would call and we’d discuss family. The woman had a mind like a computer, and I miss her insight and friendship, even though we never actually met. Her children would be third cousins, and I assume at least one of them procreated.
Since I’m descended from two Mayflower travelers and a lot of other early arrivals to America, I can assume that I have many thousands of living distant cousins.
I knew some of my father’s 1st cousins (one is a very big CEO!), but never met their eventual children, if any. My mother knew some of her 1st cousins, but I never met any. So I’ve never met any of my own second cousins in the flesh! :eek:
My wife comes from a rural area which, until recently, had very low mobility. So villagers are often well related, maybe 1st cousins on the father’s side, and 2nd cousins on the mother’s side. (Yet, despite lots of interesting such connections I’ve never encountered a single clear example of inbreeding.) Thus my kids know lots of their 2nd cousins and 3rd cousins!
Iit lived 11 miles away; we became acquainted with her in part because she also had a Farang husband. My father-in-law returned from a funeral and mentioned that he’d seen Iit there. I learned that the wake was for Iit’s grandfather and my father-in-law’s 2nd cousin. So my children are 4th cousins with Iit!
In Thai, the word for ‘first cousin’ is a 4-syllable compound word which translates as ‘child-sibling-child-sibling.’ Since there are also 1-syllable words for ‘grandchild’, ‘gt grandchild’ and even ‘gt-gt grandchild’ the Thai language could (but doesn’t) have obvious simple words for 2nd-cousin 1x removed, etc. I tried explaining this to some of the Thais: “See? ‘Len-Phii-Len-Nong’ would mean 3rd cousin!.” Their answer was “We already have a word for that: We call them Not a relative.”
Hey. You missed the last family reunion, I note. What’s up with that?