Lotto winners’ dreams finally come true

Carol Loran had a simple desire.

“I’d pray at night that my boys were OK and that the next day would be as good as the one before.”

Kevin Geoghegan’s was a little more specific. “I wanted to win the Lotto.”

Together, the couple, who have yet to reach the one-month anniversary of their first date, have made both their wishes come true.

Carol, 39, and Kevin, 46, from Mullingar, travelled to National Lottery headquarters accompanied by 50 family members and friends yesterday to pick up a jackpot cheque for €10.6m and begin adapting to life as the country’s newest Lotto millionaires.

For Kevin, that process began yesterday morning when a bank statement arrived in the post showing his balance at zero and for the first time ever he could laugh at the noughts.

For Carol, the reality of her win had yet to sink in, and apart from a new dress from Coast for her trip to Dublin, she hadn’t even thought of buying anything.

“We’ll take a short break,” she said of her first likely splurge which will see herself and Kevin take off somewhere sunny for a bit of alone time. “I have to get to know him some way,” she said, laughing.

Despite her job at Boylesports, Carol, a single mum of five boys, is not a betting woman, although it was when she took a gamble on romance with Kevin that fortune struck.

Kevin, a divorced dad-of-three, had tried to persuade her several times to go out with him, and she eventually agreed to a first date on May 11 and bought the winning Lotto ticket to last week’s midweek draw in the local Tesco after he handed her half of the price of a Quick Pick ticket and urged her to match it and try their luck.

That gesture saw them journey to Dublin by chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce yesterday.

Kevin declared he was giving up his factory job at Trend Technologies where he has worked for 26 years to spend some quality time on the greens.

Carol, on the other hand, plans on going back to work where’s she training to be a cashier.

Kevin plans to spoil his children and Carol is afraid of her life she’ll spoil hers. “They’re angels,” she said, laughing. “They haven’t asked for a thing so far. They know mammy — if they ask her more than once it’s definitely a no.”

Luckily for both of them, Carol’s policy didn’t apply to Kevin.