A Tennessee man pulled a folded Powerball ticket from the front pocket of his shirt and told a national television audience on NBC’s “Today” show that he had one of three winning tickets for the world-record $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot.
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The other winning tickets were sold in Chino Hills, California and Melbourne Beach, Florida.
Lisa Robinson called her boss from NBC’s “Today” show studio Friday, as her husband John stood by clutching their lucky ticket, worth a whopping $528 million.
In addition to the jackpot, a Powerball ticket that won $2 million was sold in Dyersburg in Dyer County, two counties north of Tipton County.
Mr Robinson said he and his wife were excited about their winnings but were “a little scared” about their future. “I knew that I wanted to get an accountant. You know what happens”.
The three jackpot winners can leave their winnings to be invested and thereby collect 30 annual payments totaling an estimated $533 million, or take their third of $983.5 million in cash all at once.
“She said check these numbers, and I said ‘okay.’ I looked at them I said yeah, they look like they’re the numbers”.
On Wednesday night state lottery officials announced Naifeh’s sold Tennessee’s jackpot winning ticket, netting the grocery store a $25,000 prize as part of the designation.
Under lottery rules, a victor has up to a year to present a ticket.
At 6:56 p.m., he bought four tickets as he always does – one for each member of his family – at Naifeh’s Food Market, located around the corner from their home.
John’s page lists him as an engineer. Lottery spokeswoman Rachel Petrie said she could not confirm the win meanwhile.
She watched the Powerball drawing and wrote down the numbers.
Drivers pass a billboard where the word “billion” has replaced “million” to show the correct amount of the jackpot for Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing on Wednesday, Jan. 13, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn.
“We were up all night”, Lisa said. “We didn’t get enough sleep”.
The pair from Munford, Tennessee, appeared with their lawyer Joe Townsend on NBS’s “Today” programme on Friday.
Robinson said she does plan to return to work and they do not plan to move.
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Townsend, who is a big TODAY fan, had his daughter, Eileen, reach out to the show to see if the couple could make the announcement on Friday.
