Couple Stunned After Finding Out Priest Who Married Them Is Now Pope Leo XIV: ‘What Are the Odds?’ (Exclusive)

The news of Pope Leo XIV‘s election hit one suburban Chicago couple a bit differently. Why? Because he married them over a decade ago!

Heather Schmit-Jaroch and her husband Dominic Jaroch were on a camping trip when her sister Heidi called her to share the unexpected news.

“I said, ‘Well, it’s probably just my sister telling me we got a new pope and I was like, ‘I’ll find out later once I get my cup of coffee made,’ ” Heather tells PEOPLE. “And then my phone kept on ringing and ringing, so I checked to make sure nothing’s wrong. And she’s like, ‘We got a pope! And it’s Father Bob!’ “

“My husband and I just started crying immediately,” Heather adds.

Pope Leo, then known as Robert Prevost, or even as “Father Bob,” married Dominic and Heather on July 19, 2014 at St. Rita of Cascia Shrine Chapel in Chicago.

As a favor to Heather’s late father Ed Schmit, the future pope flew from Peru that morning in order to make it to the ceremony. As soon as the service was done, he immediately flew out to return to his missionary work in South America.

“At the time, we didn’t know he was coming,” Heather remembers. “My dad was saying he had a surprise for me and it was about who was going to marry us.”

Shortly before the ceremony began, the future pope walked through the door and presided over their wedding in front of roughly 75 family and friends inside the St. Rita chapel.

“Every time we talk about it, we just cry,” Heather says. “It’s like happy tears, you know? I wish my dad was here to see it, because that was one of his good friends.”

Dominic, still dumbfounded days later, chimes in: “I mean, what are the odds? It’s like one in a million. I can say that I got married by the pope!”

His only wish was that Pope Leo XIV had stuck around for their wedding reception later that night. “Maybe I could’ve had a couple cocktails with the pope,” Dominic laughs.

The Alsip couple says their phones have been blowing up since the news broke last week. “It’s just been so overwhelming, this whole weekend,” Dominic says.

“I got an aunt calling me yesterday going like, ‘You’re famous! You’re in the newspaper!’ And I’m like, ‘I’m not famous, the pope is famous!’ “ he adds.

When they talk about Pope Leo XIV, Heather and Dominic still instinctively refer to him as “Father Bob,” the man Heather’s family has known since the 1980s when he and her dad first met.

Growing up, the pope visited Heather’s father almost every time he returned to his hometown Chicagoland area — going out to dinner, and sometimes catching a White Sox game with the Schmit family.

A Dolton, Ill., native, the pontiff was raised in the Chicago suburbs and attended Villanova University before later spending most of his life abroad in Peru as an Augustinian missionary. He was elevated to a cardinal by Pope Francis in January 2024 and was elected just two days into the papal conclave that began last week.

“He was so peaceful and just down to earth – just happy and fun,” Heather remembers the pope as she knew him before.

“He’s just very humble,” adds Dominic, who met him for the first time on their wedding day. “And obviously, he’s liked by extremely high people in the church, because it only took them a couple days to vote him in.”

Heather, a preschool teacher, and Dominic, a local union worker, aren’t typically eager to head home from their annual camping trip in Fremont, Wisc. But this year it’s a bit different, they explain.