A Dubuque County man’s marriage proposal was accepted on a Friday night, then the next morning, he won a lottery prize of nearly $400,000.
Nick Miller of Bernard says that even he is struggling to wrap his head around it all. He says he guesses this means he’s ready for the next parts of life!
Nick claimed his prize today at Iowa Lottery headquarters in Clive. He says that his fiancée, Lauren Timmerman, accepted his marriage proposal on June 23, then the next morning, he needed to work cattle with his brother. On his way there, he stopped for coffee and a slice of breakfast pizza at Casey’s, 717 First Ave. E. in Cascade.
Nick says he noticed while he was there that the jackpot in the Super 7s Progressive InstaPlay game had climbed to nearly $400,000, so he decided to buy a ticket, then took it out to his truck to review the results there. He thought he’d matched three winning numbers for the jackpot, but was having trouble believing what he was seeing. So he scanned the ticket on the Iowa Lottery’s mobile app and it confirmed he’d won the game’s jackpot of $390,191.
Super 7s Progressive InstaPlay is a $30 game. Its jackpot starts at $50,000 and increases with each ticket sold statewide until it’s won.
The InstaPlay product combines features from instant-scratch and lotto games. InstaPlay tickets are called scratchless because they have no security coating that needs to be removed to determine the prize won.
Nick farms with his family and works at Rail-Way Inc., a Cascade company that produces railroad crossings. He says he was bursting with the news after his win, but he knew that he and his fiancée were leaving for a week-long family vacation in Florida, so he kept things pretty quiet. He says that during the trip, his mind kept returning to his big win, and he would second-guess himself.
But he definitely did win, and he calls it a good way to start an engagement. Nick says that in addition to their wedding, he and Lauren have a house to start doing some work on, and his winnings will go a long way towards both!
Nick’s InstaPlay jackpot was one of four major prizes won in Iowa during a five-day span in late June.
The lucky streak started with a $1 million Mega Millions® prize won June 23 in Davenport. Then on June 24, Nick won his InstaPlay prize in Cascade and a Powerball® prize of $2 million was won in Ottumwa. And on June 27, a prize of $25,000 a year for life in the Lucky for Life® game was won in Centerville.
The $1 million Mega Millions prize in Davenport is the only one of the four that remains unclaimed.
It goes to show you just never know when the next big winner will hit! Thank you for playing, Stan. We hope to see YOU as a big winner soon.
Posted by: Mary Neubauer | July 03, 2023 at 04:29 PM
I played the same game about 20 seconds later.
Posted by: Stan Caspary | July 03, 2023 at 04:21 PM