Tennessee Couple Say They Won Powerball, Wife Takes Day Off Work

A Tennessee couple claiming to have the winning lottery ticket to the .58 billion Powerball jackpot made an appearance on the TODAY show Friday morning.

“We don’t have the victor coming in just yet”, said Alex Traverso, California Lottery Spokesman. The family was joined by their new lawyer, Joe Townsend, who was first to urge them to make their TV appearance.

The couple came forward on yesterday with a winning ticket for this week’s record US$1.6 billion Powerball lottery jackpot.

But wait, a co-worker told her, you may want to look at your ticket because someone bought a winning $1 million ticket at the Wawa store on Urbana Pike in Frederick.

The Jewish owner of a California chain of nursing homes bought 15,000 Powerball lottery tickets for his employees and residents.

“I checked the ticket and saw that we won”, she told lottery officials.

The Robinsons’ potential winning ticket has not yet been verified by Tennessee lottery officials, but news outlets have reported that one of the winners was sold at Naifeh’s in Munford.

Each of the winners can choose to collect 30 annual payments totaling an estimated 533 million dollars, or take their third of about 327.8 million dollars in cash at once. “I’m nervous for you”, one of the show’s hosts said to Mr Robinson, who held the piece of paper in his hand throughout the show.

“I startled him because he was asleep on the couch, ” Lisa Robinson recalled. The Tennessee couple live near the store where the winning ticket was bought.

“We’re not guaranteed tomorrow”, Robinson said of the decision to take the money all at once, rather than over time, which would pay more in the long term.

“I told her that I wasn’t feeling good and that I needed some Advil to get her to come over”, John Robinson said. Neither plans to quit their job and both said they will return to work Monday.

“I think the American public wants to hear from them, and even though they want to be private after this is over, they want to let the public know that they’re the winners, ” Townsend said.

The six winning numbers for the $1.586 billion prize were 08, 27, 34, 04, 19 and Powerball 10.