WASHINGTON — A lucky Tennessee family claims they have one of three winning Powerball tickets and appeared on NBC’s TODAY on Friday morning to share the news.
John and Lisa Robinson, from the small town of Munford, Tennessee, showed the apparent winning ticket to anchors Savannah Guthrie and Carson Daly as John pulled it from his shirt pocket.
“Now I’ll be nervous because everybody knows,”John said.
They appeared on the show with their daughter, Tiffany, as well as their attorney, Joe Townsend, and his daughter, Eileen, who is a reporter in Memphis and who contacted TODAY in hopes of helping the family reveal their winning ticket to the public.
“I Googled ‘How do you call NBC,'” she said, laughing. “And I called and eventually got passed up the line and talked to a producer and they were, rightly, a little suspicious, but we talked through it and decided to make it happen.”
The couple, who said they were going to lottery officials upon leaving the show, says their attorney recommended they appear on TODAY before making it official.
“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,” Joe says.
Upon learning they apparently had one of three winning tickets in the record $1.6 billion Powerball drawing Wednesday night, Lisa says, she ran to her husband, woke him up and told him to check the numbers on their ticket.
“I checked them, actually, four times, and 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,'” John said.
The couple says they stayed up all night in anticipation, and admit they became nervous when local media outlets confirmed one of the winning tickets was bought from Naifeh’s Food Mart, where John had bought four tickets the night of the drawing.
“[I was] actually a little scared because I didn’t know exactly what to do,” he said. “I knew that 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.”
John said he bought four tickets to represent the four members of their family, and chose the Quick Pick option.
Lisa, who works in a dermatologist’s office, said a few things went through her mind as to what winning the lottery meant to her family.
“Sallie Mae’s paid off,” she said, laughing. “But I do hope to plan on working for a little while… I’ll be there Monday.”
Before going public with their apparent winning ticket, the Robinsons said they had only told their son, daughter, two brothers and mother-in-law about what happened.
“When we verified it that morning at 4:30, I tried to get [my daughter] over to the house,” John Robinson said. “I tried to tell her hey, I need some Advil. … Well, she didn’t bring them to the house. … So I had to stop what I was doing and I had to go over to her house and me and her mother sat down and said, ‘Listen, we gotta talk to you.'”
The prize for one of the winning tickets is roughly $533 million if the Robinsons choose the lump-sum payment, which is $327.8 million after taxes. The other two winners are reported to be in California and Florida.
There have been other hoax claims in the wake of the world-record jackpot and lottery officials have so far not announced any official winners.
