Terry Coggeshall of Durham and his wife have been using the same set of numbers to play the lottery for 26 years, and on Wednesday, those numbers won them a $366,673 Cash 5 jackpot.
“These are my wife’s numbers that we’ve been playing for 26 years,” said Coggeshall. “We started playing them in Florida when we lived there.”
Coggeshall, who works as a delivery coordinator, purchased his winning Cash 5 ticket from the Harris Teeter on West Barbee Chapel Road in Chapel Hill.
The couple watched the drawing live in their living room on Wednesday night. “I was in the La-Z-Boy as she was standing there watching,” he recalled. “And she started screaming. She goes, ‘I won, I won!’ And I go, ‘What?!’”
Coggeshall said their lucky numbers have gotten them “close a few times.” To win the jackpot, their lucky ticket beat odds of 1 in 962,598.
“We never really thought that we’d get all of that,” he said as he claimed his prize Thursday at lottery headquarters in Raleigh. “I can’t wait to see my wife’s face when she looks at the check.”
After required federal and state tax withholdings, he took home $259,425.
“It’s very exciting,” said Coggeshall. “It takes a lot of stress off. It’ll be a good amount to put away to help with retirement.”
Carolina Cash 5 tickets are $1 and drawings are held every night. Friday’s jackpot is $110,000.
Cash 5 is one of four lottery games in North Carolina where players have the option of buying their tickets through Online Play either through the lottery’s website or with the NC Lottery Official Mobile App.
Ticket sales from draw games like Cash 5 make it possible for the lottery to raise more than $725 million a year for education. For details on how lottery funds have helped all of North Carolina’s 100 counties, click on the “Impact” section of the lottery’s website.