Harold and Tina Ehrenberg, of Mandeville, claimed the winning prize two weeks before it was set to expire, the Times-Picayune reported. Prizes for lottery-style games must be claimed within 180 days of the drawing in which the prize was won, the newspaper reported.
"We have family coming into town for Thanksgiving, so I was cleaning up the house and found a few lottery tickets on my nightstand that we hadn’t checked,” Tina Ehrenberg said at lottery headquarters on Nov. 19.
The winning ticket was bought in Metairie, WDSU reported.
After realizing they had a winning ticket, the Ehrenbergs panicked, believing they had missed the deadline to redeem it.
"I kept waiting for something to go wrong," Harold Ehrenberg told WDSU.
The Ehrenbergs received $1,274,313 after state and federal tax withholding, lottery officials said.
"We don’t have any plans to buy anything crazy or go on any big trips,” Tina Ehrenberg said at lottery headquarters.
"The most fun is going to be depositing that check," Harold Ehrenberg said.
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