has anyone done genealogy research and met new relatives in the process?
No, but my nephew and daughter did a little bit, that is where I learned what ship my grandpa came over on, and that if you go far enough back I have some Jewish ancestors.
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Yes, more than once. Some were just one or two generations back and some were as far back as the mid to early 1800’s.
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I have spent several thousand hours developing family histories for families of relations. i have answered a lot of questions for many family members. My wife and I found an unknown cousin of hers living about 20 miles from us. We had dinner with him a couple of times and he filled us in on some others. He is a descendant of my wife’s great grand uncle (brother of one of her great grandfather’s).
That line of my wife’s ancestors arrived from Austria in the 1880s. My Polish line arrived here in the 1900s and I haven’t had much of success taking that further. Three DNA tests tell me that have 3% Ashkenzi Jewish DNA. I have been able to trace a few ancestors of my mother and my wife’s father back to pre-colonial times. I was also able to one of my cousins’ lines back to New Amsterdam, thanks to good Dutch record keeping.
The local library here has a great genealogy department.
Someday I may spend a few hours there and see how deep I can dig.
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familysearch.org has literally millions of documents online. You can open a free account and access most of it. It’s operated by the LDS church. We have spent 3-4 weeks over the years at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, also operated by LDS. Last time there, I was searching Polish church records. Since I don’t speak Polish, one of the docents who do came over, translated the ones I identified on the fly and printed off her translation for me. The do not prostelytize, but they do help.
They have branch libraries in many cities, including KC.
That is the one I was talking about.
i’ve had a lot of finds of people I didn’t know, but had heard of some. I knew there ancestors that were also my ancestors and other variations
A number of years ago I met someone whose grandmother was my father‘s cousin, although we had not met before she had heard of my father, who was very close to her grandmother recently, I found out that this cousin has her daughter who is a physician in Texas since my niece is a anesthesia in Houston. I thought they might know each other so I asked my my niece who is an anesthesiologist in Houston. If she know her, it turns out that their kids went to the same school and they were very good friends in life in in life, but had no idea that they were related to each other until I mentioned it.
The annual Roots Tech Conference at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City is worth going to if you’re really into genealogy. It has lots of classes on just about anything having to do with the subject. Lots of experts, lots of vendors are there and it usually runs 4-5 days.
I have not done research on genealogy because I’m afraid of what I might find out. 
I started it after my mother’s death because there were a lot of questions she never really answered. I found the answers and, while not pretty, I was happy I did. That got my wife into looking for some answers in her family. We have yet to discover the major answer, but asked and answered more. It is amazing to find out enough to see the history of the country unfold in your own ancestry.
We watch Finding Your Roots on PBS. Louis Gates finds answers and great stories for each guest. He asks each one if the things he found were ever discussed in the family, and I’d guess that answer in 95% of the case is No. Same was true in our families.
My problem is I have to go back to Germany after 2 generations
Similar issue here, except its Poland. I’ve considered getting it done by someone there but never did it,