Iowa man hits jackpot in the lottery and in love

CLIVE, Iowa — An eastern Iowa man has hit the jackpot in love and the lottery.

The Iowa Lottery said 31-year-old Nick Miller of Bernard, in Dubuque County, won a nearly $400,000 prize in the Super 7s Progressive InstaPlay game. He claimed his prize Monday at the Iowa Lottery headquarters in Clive.

Miller bought the ticket on June 23rd at the Casey’s in Cascade when he stopped to get a slice of breakfast pizza and coffee. After noticing the jackpot in the game had risen to almost $400,000 he decided to try his luck.

“I went back to my truck and the first thing I did was look down to the progressive jackpot game and started matching my winning numbers,” Miller said. “And I had one and then two and then I saw the third one, so I had to do a double-take and check them again. Eventually, I checked them on my mobile app, and sure enough, it was the winner.”

The icing on the cake? The day before Miller won the big prize his marriage proposal was accepted by Lauren Timmerman.

The Iowa Lottery said the jackpot had been growing for more than two months. When Miller won, it had climbed to nearly $390,191.

MIller farms with his family and also works at Rail-Way, Inc. in Cascade. He said he kept things pretty quiet about the win at first because he and his new fiancee were leaving for a week-long family trip to Florida.

Miller said the winnings will help make a great start to the engagement.

“There is the wedding and a house to start doing some work on,” he said. “It will definitely go a long way towards both of those.”