Six-time Chicago marathon champion and Paralympic track athlete Tatyana McFadden shared her incredible story on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" Wednesday.

McFadden was born with spina bifida and is paralyzed from the waist down. She was ultimately put up for adoption by her birth mother and began her life living in a Russian orphanage.

“I lived there for the first six years of my life,” she said on the show.

While there, she watched other children, many her friends, get adopted at the orphanage one by one.

“They wanted the healthy perfect children but that changed my sixth year,” she said.

That’s when McFadden’s adoptive mother visited the orphanage while working for the US government.

“I guess I was pretty cute and she decided to adopt me,” McFadden said.

She was eventually brought to live with her new family in Maryland – and that’s where her journey to iconic athlete status began.

“Because I didn’t have any medical treatment for the first six years of my life, my parents thought it was important for me to get into sports because they know that the fastest way to heal and to become healthy,” she said.

Though she tried everything from swimming to archery, it wasn’t until she tried wheelchair racing that she really found her niche.

“When I tried wheelchair racing I knew that was for me,” she said.

Wheelchair racing changed her life in more ways than one as she continued to grow and get older.

“I was getting healthy and independent and strong and I was learning to live life normally and successfully and then I had dreams and desires,” she said.

One of those dreams was to become a Paralymic athlete.

McFadden has since become the fastest wheelchair racer of all time, winning 17 Paralympic medals, including seven gold medals, and setting the world record in every track event. She’s also a 17-time Abbott World Marathon Majors winner.

She most recently competed in the Rio Games, where she finished with six medals, four gold and two silver, the most medals by a U.S. track and field athlete at a Paralympics since 1992.

In 2013, she made history when she was the first person — able-bodied or otherwise — to win all four major marathons, Boston, New York, Chicago and London, in a single year. She then repeated the feat two times over for a grand total of 12 marathon titles in three years.

She recent met President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama.

“In the 10 minutes I had with [Michelle Obama] I asked, ‘What’s the best advice to be on the Ellen show?’” McFadden said. “She said, ‘Just have fun because [Ellen] is fun and crazy.’”

DeGeneres gifted McFadden with Ellen-themed wheelchair spinners ahead of her upcoming appearance in the Chicago Marathon this weekend.