A dispenser for a sanitary shoe cover holds a stack of shoe covers with their resiliently elastic mouths in a stretched-open condition in a storage zone. Sanitary covers are carried individually from the storage zone stack to a dispensing zone. The individual shoe cover is automatically released from the dispenser in response to downward insertion of the shoe-covered foot into the stretched-open shoe cover, permitting the resiliently elastic mouth to gather into abutment with the shoe-covered foot. The process is automatically repeated to carry another individual cover to the dispensing zone in response to the upward removal of the sanitary-covered, shoe-covered foot from the dispensing zone.