British family scoop £61.MILLION on EuroMillions – days after mum had all clear after successful cancer op
Welsh family "luckiest people on the planet" who are "living the dream" after lotto win
A WELSH family are the "luckiest people on the planet" after scooping an enormous £61.1 million EuroMillions jackpot - just days after one of them got the all clear from a cancer op.
Stephanie Davies, 23, reluctantly bought a ticket on Friday night after mum Sonia phoned from Florida and begged her to buy one.
The 53-year-old was in the US having vital keyhole surgery to remove a cancerous tumour, and had a feeling she would go on a winning streak after the op was a success.
Sonia, who works as an administration assistant, had cancer in the parathyroid glands in her neck.
After recovering from the disease and scooping her life-changing win, she said: “What a roller coaster of a week we’ve had.
"I had my operation on Wednesday and until then, we didn’t know how serious it was.
"They told me that if it hadn’t been removed it would have been fatal – and at the very least I would have lost my voice within a year.
"They managed to give me the all clear straight after the operation, so as you would imagine, we were on cloud nine.
“We were about to return home to celebrate our brilliant news.
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"Keith was scanning his emails and read about the EuroMillions rollover.
"He was convinced that we were the luckiest people on the planet and definitely on a winning streak after the success of my op, so we called up my daughter Courtney to ask her to go and buy a ticket.
"She was travelling and wasn’t able to change her plans so we called Stephanie instead as something told us we needed to get a ticket – and the rest is history!”
Sonia Davies and her two daughters Courtney, 19, and Stephanie, 23, will each enjoy a £12,220,488.58 share of the enormous jackpot.
Stephanie's partner Steve, 30, and Sonia's partner Keith Reynolds, 55, are the other two lucky winners in the five person syndicate.
The family from Monmouth in Wales were unveiled and at a press conference earlier.
Stephanie, a sales executive, said: “I thought mum was mad calling me from holiday, but they were so insistent I knew we had to do it.
"My car was blocked in the drive by my boyfriend Steve’s, so to save time I made him drive me to buy a ticket instead of moving mine.”
Stephanie bought six Lucky Dips from the Overmonow Gargage in Monmouth, but it wasn’t until the early hours of Sunday morning that she remembered to check the tickets.
After having dinner with friends she headed up stairs and said to 30-year-old Steve: “If I shout down it means we’ve won the lottery and if not, I’ve gone to bed.”
Checking the numbers on her iPad she realised they had all of them – before reading one UK ticket-holder had won the whole £61m.
Stephanie continued: “I came back downstairs to find Steve and couldn’t take my hand away from my mouth in shock.
"I kept saying ‘we’ve won and I’m not joking’.
"I could see Steve was trying to read me to see whether I was telling the truth but I was so emotional, he decided to check. "And he checked again. We giggled. We memorised the numbers and checked again. We checked the draw date again.
"We locked all our windows and doors and spoke in hushed voices just in case someone could hear that we had won.
"It was all very MI6 – very secret service!”
Desperate to share the unbelievable news, Stephanie called her mum who was waiting to board her delayed fight home.
Sonia said: “I was worried there was a problem. All I could hear was Steph sobbing down the phone and the odd muffled word.
"I thought she’d told me she’d lost her dog.
"Then I heard Steve shouting ‘we’ve won £61m’!
“We put them on speaker phone so Keith and I could both listen, but realised everyone in the airport could hear, so we huddled round a bin while we checked the numbers and realised we really had won!
"I can remember saying ‘if we don’t make it home just make sure you spend it all’.
"It was the longest flight of our life!”
She added: “Winning is just like living the dream."
Stephanie called younger sister Courtney at 1.45am on Monday morning while the teenager was in Reading with her boyfriend Kieran.
Courtney, 19, said: “Steph just kept saying she didn’t know what to do.
"She then said we’d won the lottery.
"We kept repeating ‘oh my god’ to each other, over and over. In the end we had to say bye and hang up as we were so in shock we weren’t actually talking to each other.”
Stephanie and Steve couldn’t sleep and decided to take selfies with the winning ticket in case anything happened to it.
At 5:20am they couldn't wait any longer, so shared the news with other family members before calling Camelot to claim their prize.
With the win still sinking in, each member of the syndicate are starting to think about what they are going to do with their £12,220,488.58 share.
Steph and Steve bought their first house together at Christmas and want to spend the money turning it into their dream home.
Steph says she has been waiting eight months to finish her bathroom, so this will be high on her list along with a trip to the Caribbean.
Courtney is studying at the University of Southampton and has just finished the first year of a Psychology degree.
She plans to complete her degree before deciding what to do next.
The teenager has already sorted her accommodation for next year, but has two items on her shopping list – an electric toothbrush and a new car
Kieran, 20, a student at Reading University is over the moon about her win and now has "high expectations" about his upcoming 21st birthday gift.
Sonia and Keith, who works as a Regional Director, are looking forward to sharing their win with family and friends.
A National Lottery spokesman said: "What an amazing win for the UK - the fourth EuroMillions jackpot to be won here this year.
"We're delighted the ticket-holder has come forward to claim their prize and their ranking of 10th place in the National Lottery rich list."
The Davies family matched five main numbers and two lucky stars.
The winning numbers were 01, 21, 26, 40 and 50, while the lucky star numbers were 02 and 04.
As well as the jackpot prize, five players won a guaranteed £1 million and a luxury trip to Australia's Gold Coast in the UK Millionaire Maker, a National Lottery spokesman said.
The latest win comes after an unnamed UK ticket-holder claimed £51.8 million on EuroMillions in April, which followed jackpots worth £24.7 million and £24.6 million won by UK ticket-holders in February.
All three ticket-holders remained anonymous.
These incredible jackpots are still a few million pounds away from being the largest for a Euromillions winner in the UK.
Colin and Chris Weir, from Largs, North Ayrshire, top the list after they won £161,653,000 in July 2011.
Adrian Bayford and wife Gillian won a staggering £148million in 2012 but the couple have since divorced.
Adrian has set up a film and record memorabilia store in Cambridge, and says he's been getting "bored" in his £6million country mansion.