Cumbria couple buy first family home after scooping £3.6m on Euromillions

Helen (58) and Lee Kuchczynski (52) wasted no time after matching five main numbers plus one Lucky Star on EuroMillions, viewing and making an offer on their dream home on Helen’s 58th birthday.

Helen said: “We have rented all our married life, and with retirement looming didn’t think that would ever change. Then Lady Luck more than smiled at us, she grinned and burst out laughing, so instead of the usual Chinese takeaway in front of the telly to celebrate my birthday, we bought a whopping detached house with all the mod cons – it’s even got electric gates!

“And Lee’s had a little present too, he’s swapped an HGV for his dream car, an Audi RS4 Avant, but it’s not been all about the big spends. My first purchase as a millionaire was two bags of cat litter while Lee invested in a new back-scratcher, not sure that can be considered living the high life!”

Helen, a financial administrator, and HGV driver Lee’s winning journey started when Helen bought a Lucky Dip for the EuroMillions draw, she said: “I always play online, up until a few months ago it was just once a week but earlier this year I decided we really needed our luck to change so decided to ‘go for it’ and play more regularly. Not in a million years did I imagine our luck would change quite so dramatically but I’m very pleased it did!”

Early the following morning when, enjoying a morning coffee before work, she spotted an email from The National Lottery alerting her to a win.

She said: “I logged into my account on the laptop but was disappointed to see the balance was the same as usual, 40p. I logged in with my app instead to see if that showed anything different, still 40p, so I then clicked on the message and the 40p was very quickly forgotten, and replaced with £3,665,079.10!”

Not prepared to believe it was right, and that the family’s luck had changed quite so significantly, Helen took the phone through to show her daughter who was getting ready for her second day at a new job.

She laughs: “As I handed the phone to our daughter I said, ‘I’ve won something on the National Lottery but I think the decimal point is in the wrong place so it’s probably a scam.’ She looked at it, refreshed the app, refreshed it again and finally, turned to me and calmly said, ‘Mum, I really think it’s real, you need to ring the number.’

“The only problem was the phonelines weren’t open at that time in the morning so we spent the next 20 minutes drinking endless cups of coffee and giggling at one another, and thinking what was Lee going to say!”

They didn’t have long to wait, and as soon as the win was confirmed, Helen rang Lee to share the good news.

He said: “As a HGV driver I leave home on a Monday at 3.30am and get back Friday night so we’ve shared many of life’s ups and downs via phone but that’s one call I will always remember. I’d just done a drop in Scunthorpe and was headed to North Wales for the next job when Helen told me she had good news but that I had to pull over as it might be shocking. Hearing, ‘we’ve won £3.6M on the National Lottery’ certainly was good news and certainly was shocking!”

Helen said: “Lee was medically discharged from the Army in 1995 and has been driving HGV’s since then. It’s tough work and long hours, and his health is not the best so when I shared our amazing news, his first words were ‘does that mean I can come home?’ shortly followed by ‘does it mean I can retire?’ I was delighted to be able to say a big yes to both! He did his final job that afternoon and handed in his truck keys for the last time.”

Looking ahead to the future, the couple who have been married for 24 years, are going to take some time to get used to their life changing win. Helen has no plans to give up work, although thinks she may cut her hours a bit, while Lee will focus on getting the medical treatment he has needed for some time but previously couldn’t afford the time off work needed to recuperate.

Helen said: “Lots of people have asked us if we’re jetting off to exotic locations now but to be honest, once we’re in our new home we won’t need to go anywhere. We live in a beautiful part of the world and we’ve rushed about, trying to make ends meet for years so for now, we’ll stay put and enjoy the peace.”

Helen bought their winning EuroMillions Lucky Dip ticket online at national-lottery.co.uk. Her winning numbers were; 14, 18, 24, 25, 50 and Lucky Star 6. The other Lucky Star in the draw was 11.

Helen won in a draw where the EuroMillions jackpot had reached its cap and can’t get any bigger. When the jackpot is at its cap, money that would have gone into boosting the jackpot, is shared among players in the next prize tier instead. The estimated prize for matching five main numbers and one Lucky Star is usually £130,554.30. Helen’s prize last Tuesday was boosted to an astonishing £3.6M.