Couple's Lottery Technique Pays Off, After 26 Years

It's all about persistence. That's the trait CBS News attributes to a North Carolina couple who won a $366,673 lottery jackpot last week after playing the same set of numbers they've been using for 26 years. Per a release from the North Carolina Education Lottery, Terry Coggeshall of Durham purchased the winning Cash 5 ticket at a Chapel Hill Harris Teeter, using the numbers he and his wife have been playing since they lived in Florida more than a quarter century ago. Then came the night the numbers were drawn.

"I was in the La-Z-Boy as she was standing there watching," Coggeshall says of last Wednesday, when the two were waiting to see what the winning numbers were. "And she started screaming. She goes, 'I won, I won!' And I go, 'What?!'" The Coggeshalls' chances of winning: 1 in 962,598. The delivery coordinator says he and his wife have come "close a few times" to winning using those numbers, and now that they've hit it big, they'll funnel the cash into a retirement fund. They'll get $259,425 after taxes are taken out. "It's very exciting," Coggeshall says. "It takes a lot of stress off." (More lottery stories.)