By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
April 16, 2000
Michael and Teresamarie Siciliano are two peas in a pod. For one thing, neither of them tried to get out of jury duty when they were called to serve nine years ago.
Good thing, too, because that’s how the couple met.
Michael was a 30-year-old police officer who had always wanted to be on a jury. But because of his job, he thought he would be disqualified.
He hoped that wouldn’t happen. Especially after seeing Teresamarie for the first time.
“On the first day, we sat around waiting to be called,” he recalls. “I was reading when I heard one girl ask another if she was going to finish a box of candy she had just bought. The other girl replied: `No, I’ll save them for later. I don’t want to have too much fun at once.’ This made me laugh and I looked up to see who said it. It was Teresamarie.”
Both were accepted as jurors.
The next morning, he made sure he sat next to her.
“This turned out to be great planning because the deputy came in and told us that these would be our seats for the remainder of the trial,” says Michael, now 39.
“I didn’t know he liked me,” Teresamarie says. “I thought he liked another girl.”
She knew soon enough.
“As soon as I saw her in the jury box, I knew I’d marry her,” Michael says. “I told her that, too.”
There was a little obstacle. Teresamarie had a boyfriend whom she’d been dating five years.
“I didn’t really expect anything to happen between (Michael and me),” says Teresamarie, 33. “But I did think he was really nice. I was flirting a little, too. My mom even noticed. She pointed out to me that I was getting really dressed up for jury duty.”
When the trial ended a week later, Michael decided to let her know he was still interested.
“I walked her back to her car and asked if she was interested in going on a date with me and she said yes.”
“I said yes right away,” says Teresamarie, a preschool teacher. “I’d been with my last boyfriend for five years and it wasn’t working. Being with Michael felt right. He called me as soon as he got home that night.”
The next evening, they went to a Greek restaurant for dinner.
They got engaged in September 1991. Five months later they were married.
“Every time people tell me about trying to get out of jury duty, I think about how we met,” Michael says. “And sometimes even I can’t believe it.”
The couple live in Chicago with their two children.
