They’ve got the golden ticket! Meet John and Lisa Robinson, the Munford, Tennessee, couple who claim they have a winning Powerball ticket from the $1.6 billion jackpot.
The pair, along with their daughter, Tiffany, appeared on the Today show on Friday, January 15, to reveal to the world that they got all the right numbers in Wednesday’s historic drawing. The family was joined by their new lawyer, Joe Townsend, who was first to urge them to make their TV appearance.
“Well, I think the American public wants to hear from them, and even though they want to be private after this is over, they want the public to know they’re the winners,” Townsend explained.
The Robinsons then took the Today anchors back to the night of the drawing, when John picked up four tickets on his way home from work feeling under the weather. He gave his wife the tickets and went to sleep.
“So I got to looking, and I saw it, and I looked again, they’re the same,” Lisa explained of the moment she learned she was the winner. “Looked again, and the third time I went running down the hallway. ‘John, John, you’ve got to check these numbers!’ And I startled him because he was asleep on the couch.”
Her hesitant husband looked at the numbers four times, but was still skeptical.
“I said, ‘Well, I’ll believe it when the news comes on in the morning and they say ‘Hey there’s a winner been in Munford,'” he recalled. Of course, that’s exactly what happened.
“[I] actually [got] a little scared because I didn’t know exactly what to do,” John admitted. “I knew I wanted to get an accountant. I knew that I wanted to get a lawyer and try to follow the procedures that they tell you to follow. Now I’ll be nervous because everybody knows.”
The family said they were going straight from the Today show to the Powerball offices to verify their winning ticket, noting that they’d only told their immediate family. And Lisa said she plans to be at work on Monday.
“I hope not to move,” John said of his Munford address.
“We’ve been there forever!” Lisa added.
If their ticket is verified, the Robinsons will be splitting the $1.6 billion jackpot with two other winners — one in California and one in Florida.
