A Pennsylvania woman won $1 million from a lottery ticket just weeks before her husband died from a brain tumor, alleviating his worries that she would struggle financially after his death.
Karen Coffman, a Pittsburgh-area retiree, told CBS News that when she told her husband, Robert, that she had won the jackpot, he initially thought she was lying.
“Throughout the years, I kept telling him, ‘You watch; one of these days, I am going to hit the million. You watch and see,’” recalled Coffman, who previously won $65,000 from the same BP gas station where she purchased her latest winning ticket.
“And he would just laugh at me and say, ‘Yeah, right.’ And I was like, ‘Come on, with my luck, you know I am going to hit,’” she continued. “And then, whenever I hit, I said to him, I said, ‘Rob, you can go ahead and go. You don’t have to worry. I’ll be ok.’”
Coffman has had notably good luck while playing the Pennsylvania lottery over the years — she won $500 on a scratcher just a few weeks before winning $1 million.
Sadly, Robert was dying, and he knew it. Even though he never got to enjoy his wife’s latest winnings, Coffman says she hopes he can see her now.
“I do think he had something in the works because he was worried. I hope he’s looking down on this,” the 61-year-old lottery winner said at a Thursday event with lotto officials.
As for what Coffman plans to do with her winnings, she is taking a lump sum payment in order to move to Florida.
“I don’t want winter no more,” she told CBS. “I hate the cold.”
She also plans to take her family on a Disney trip, as well as invest some money.
Karen and Robert were married for 31 years before he passed.
