Lottery winner can’t quit looking at ticket and its big prize. ‘It finally happened’

A man whose wife is on disability shared life-changing news with his spouse when he won a huge lottery prize in Iowa.

But she didn’t believe him.

It took some convincing, but now the 59-year-old man and his wife have a more relaxed outlook on their future thanks to his win in the Lucky for Life game from the Iowa Lottery.

“Everybody always dreams about winning this, thinks about winning it, and now it finally happened,” Paul Freeman, of Des Moines, told lottery officials when he accepted his prize Aug. 21.

Freeman bought his ticket at a grocery store in Des Moines, and he won the big prize by matching the first five winning numbers of the drawing — 15-17-35-40-45. He missed out on the Lucky Ball 6, which would have given him $1,000 a day for life.

He kept checking his ticket making sure what he was seeing was real.

“It continues to say the same amount each and every time,” he told lottery officials. “And on my phone app, it said the same thing last night.”

Freeman said his wife thought he was joking when he called her to inform her of the win. But accepting his winnings, he told lottery officials, will ensure she’s “finally convinced.”

Odds of winning the $25,000 a day for life prize in the Lucky for Life game are 1 in 1.8 million.

The winner, who opted on taking the $390,000 lump sum option, said he plans on achieving a debt-free life thanks to the win.

“My wife had some surgeries, she had some medical issues, and she’s on disability right now,” he said. “This is really going to go to paying off all of our debt and investing the rest of the money to getting back to where we need to be so hopefully in seven years, we can retire comfortably and retire happy.”

This story was originally published August 22, 2024 at 3:09 PM with the headline "Lottery winner can’t quit looking at ticket and its big prize. ‘It finally happened’."