Couple using same lottery numbers for 26 years finally hits the North Carolina jackpot
A couple playing the same set of lottery numbers for 26 years is finally celebrating a big win in North Carolina.
Terry Coggeshall, a Durham resident, used his wife’s lucky picks to score a jackpot prize worth $366,673, the N.C. Education Lottery said Friday in a news release.
“We never really thought that we’d get all of that,” Coggeshall said in the release. “I can’t wait to see my wife’s face when she looks at the check.”
Coggeshall’s good fortune started with a trip to a Harris Teeter supermarket in Chapel Hill. At the West Barbee Chapel Road location, he bought a lottery ticket using numbers his wife came up with more than two decades ago, officials say.
The couple tuned in live on Wednesday to find out how their ticket fared in the Carolina Cash 5 game drawing, according to the N.C. Education Lottery.
“I was in the La-Z-Boy as she was standing there watching,” Coggeshall told the lottery. “And she started screaming. She goes, ‘I won, I won!’”
It turns out, their ticket beat nearly 1-in-a-million odds to win $366,673. Until then, the husband and wife had only come close to scoring a jackpot prize with the lucky numbers, which they also used when they lived in Florida, officials say.
Coggeshall got to keep $259,425 after taxes, according to officials.
“It takes a lot of stress off,” said Coggeshall, a delivery coordinator. “It’ll be a good amount to put away to help with retirement.”
It’s not the first time a North Carolina couple has gotten a windfall.
In September, a middle school teacher scored a big lottery prize after her husband picked up a lucky ticket, McClatchy News reported.
And in January, officials say a couple married 70 years hit the jackpot just in time for their wedding anniversary.
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