Those winners have not been announced yet.
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No one has produced the other winning tickets, which overcame odds of 1 in 292.2 million to land on all six numbers at a Publix supermarket in Melbourne Beach, Florida, and a 7-Eleven in Chino Hills, California.
They planned to do that immediately after their appearance in the “Today” show’s NY studio.
The couple said they bought four tickets at Naifeh’s Food Mart – where one of the winning tickets was sold – in their hometown of Munford, which has a population of just under 6,000 people. He bought four quick-pick tickets, one for each family member. Her wife stayed up to watch the lottery drawing at night and learned that they won the jackpot after carefully checking the numbers for several times.
John Robinson leads the family dog as he walks to an elevator at the Tennessee Lottery headquarters, Friday, Jan. 15, 2016, in Nashville, Tenn.
Their daughter Tiffany, who flew with them to NY and back, is looking forward to paying off her student loans.
Lottery officials estimate it will take about 45 minutes to verify the ticket. Winning tickets were also sold in California and Florida.
Next stop for the Robinsons will be to verify the ticket with Tennessee Lottery officials.
John Robinson said he was nervous after revealing his identity on the “Today” show.
Robinson did say that he had signed the back of the ticket, showing his ownership of it. “We do want to enjoy a little bit of our earnings, and maybe invest a little bit of it so our son and daughter will have it and they’ll never need anything again”.
The family said they don’t plan to move, and they even went into work on Thursday. “This is for their own safety”, Lopez said.
The announcement of the lottery winners came after the previous 19 draws produced no jackpot winners, and the grand prize rolled over each time.
The law in Tennessee stipulates that the victor has to come in person with the ticket in their hand and identification of the person who bought it, which the Robinsons have not done yet.
John Robinson works in information technology and his wife is employed at a dermatologist’s office in Memphis, which is about 25 miles south of Munford. The couple is in their middle 50s.
“Who will be coming out of the woodwork?” said Mary Sue Smith, their neighbor since about 1995.
Townsend, the lawyer, thought it best to go to a national media outlet first, rather than Tennessee lottery officials, so they could control the story. “It’s a joke. It’s a prank…by my brother”, one of the nurse’s daughters tells the New York Daily News. But a Powerball spokeswoman confirmed that the winning tickets must be claimed in the states in which they were purchased.
The Tennessee Lottery confirms the couple who appeared on the “Today” show on Friday morning claiming to be one of the three winners of the $1.6 billion Powerball drawing did draw the lucky numbers. It was the largest lottery prize offered in North America and no other lottery in the world had ever featured a jackpot of that size that could be won on a single ticket.
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“It is history. We are all so excited for our city” commented Rita Talwar a resident from Chino Hills who went to the store to celebrate.
