Northern Irish couple start 2019 with a £114.9MMillion jackpot win!

Instead of starting their celebrations with a wild shopping spree, Frances Connolly, 52, and her husband Patrick, 54, made their first priority to write a list of family and friends to share their good fortune with – and it was already standing at 50 lucky people on the first draft!

“This is a massive sum of money and we want it to have a huge impact on the lives of other people we know and love as well as on our future too. This win gives us the chance to really make a difference for our family and friends,” Frances explained.

The couple are regular Lotto players but only normally buy tickets for EuroMillions when there is a big jackpot. With Christmas behind them and a big jackpot on offer, Frances had decided to buy some tickets for the New Year’s Day draw when they were out shopping together but forgot. Instead of going back to the shop, Patrick decided to play online and bought one Lucky Dip.

That same evening, Patrick was on his computer checking emails at around 10pm while Frances watched TV in the same room and he decided to check online to see if they had won anything.

He checked and the winning numbers matched their own. He then checked again on a few different sites and they still matched. Frances then remembers him sliding back in his chair to look at her. He turned the computer round and said, “Do you want the good news..?”

Patrick turned to Frances and calmly said ‘we’ve won’. Frances asked him how much, thinking it was maybe a few pounds and he said ‘no, we’ve won’.

After staring at the numbers on the screen for what seemed like a lifetime, they received an official email from The National Lottery at around 1am saying they had won and when they checked their account they were the only winners of the huge amount.

Frances said, “We don’t really do excited – perhaps I raised my voice just a bit at the time when I found out – but we celebrated with a cup of tea and a hug.”

Patrick added, “We really didn’t know what to do or how to react and we didn’t sleep a wink that night. We rang Camelot at 8am in the morning to verify the win. Then it started to dawn on us that it was true, even though it still hasn’t really sunk in.”

Apart from sharing the huge win with those closest to them, the couple are still deciding how else to treat themselves. Frances would like to buy a second hand car – a Jaguar – and Patrick admits he just wants to shower his wife of 28 years with lots of really nice presents! A holiday to Mauritius could be on the cards as well as some trips to watch rugby matches and a F1 Grand Prix.

Frances said, “We honestly thought we would never win anything like this. Never in a million years. I’m sure that lots of other people think the same but we are proof that it can happen to anyone and we feel so grateful and privileged that lady luck has landed at our door on this occasion.”

4th January 2019