Arkansas Couple Wins Lottery Twice in One Weekend - East Idaho News
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Arkansas Couple Wins Lottery Twice in One Weekend

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020513 StephenTerriWeaverDoubleLotto?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1360081290062Arkansas Scholarship Lottery(NEW YORK) — An Arkansas couple struck gold twice after winning $1 million and $50,000 jackpots, both of them during this past weekend.

Stephen, 54, and Terri Weaver, 55, of Stuttgart, Ark., left on Friday for a weekend trip to a cabin near Greers Ferry Lake, over 100 miles away.  On Saturday evening, they stopped at T-Ricks convenience store in the nearby city of Pangburn.  Stephen bought five $1 Million Riches instant scratch-off tickets while his wife bought four.

“We pick up a couple of tickets on the weekend when we go to our cabin on the river,” said Terri, an office manager with a water company.  “It’s a weekly thing.  We just pick up a few here and a few there.”

Once they brought the tickets to the cabin, they realized one of Stephen’s $20 tickets won the $1 million jackpot.

“I almost had a heart attack,” said Stephen, who owns a plumbing company.  “I had to have an aspirin.”

On Sunday, they stopped at the convenience store again and bought six tickets “just for the heck of it because it was fun,” Terri explained.

This time, Terri’s Taxes Paid instant ticket for which she paid $10 was a $50,000 winner.

“When she handed it to me, I fell back in my chair and almost went into cardiac arrest again,” Stephen said of the second ticket.  “We jumped around, hollered, and screamed.  It’s just not possible that it happened twice.  The odds must be astronomical.”

The couple, who have been married for 35 years and have a son in Tulsa, Okla., said they will continue to work in their respective jobs and pay off some bills.

“We’re going to put it in a little, or big, nest egg,” Stephen said.

The owner of the convenience store gets 1 percent of the winnings.  

“He’s pretty happy too,” Stephen said.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

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