Million-dollar call was good news, not bad news

By Kate Northrop

BOISE, Idaho — An Idaho man had his wife concerned when his tone took on a rather serious edge prior to revealing a $1 million lottery win.

Scooping a million dollars in the lottery is no easy feat — it’s a celebration that brings out the raw, unbridled reaction of winning. One Idaho man’s reaction was so intense, his wife had feared the worst for just a brief moment.

Corey Dryden was out running errands last Friday night at Albertsons Marketplace on Broadway in Boise when he was hit with a sudden bout of lottery fever. Feeling the weight of his winnings from a prior win, he decided to take another leap.

“I was getting a few things from the store before the big Boise State game and had a feeling I should buy a ticket” Dryden told the Idaho Lottery. “I already had a $50 winning ticket that I cashed in and got another ticket. This is the first ticket I’ve ever purchased at Albertsons. I just had a feeling I needed to get a ticket there when I got our groceries.”

The ticket he purchased was from the Lottery’s $50 $1,000,000 Cash” scratch-off game. He went out to his car to scratch it and scanned the ticket with the Lottery’s mobile app.

He quickly found out he had won the game’s final top prize of $1 million, and the realization hit him hard.

“I called my wife to tell her I’d won,” Dryden said in a press release. “I was so serious at first, she thought someone had died.”

He claimed his prize at Lottery headquarters in Boise on Monday afternoon and told Lottery officials that he plans on investing the winnings for his family’s future.

Since Dryden won the last available top prize of $1 million in the $50 “$1,000,000 Cash” scratch-off game, the Lottery has ended the game and is in the process of removing remaining stock from the shelves, a spokesperson told Lottery Post.

The final date to claim prizes from the game is June 6, 2026.

For selling the winning ticket, the retailer receives a bonus commission of $20,000 from the Lottery.

(Click to display full-size in gallery)Corey Dryden had his wife concerned when his tone took on a rather serious edge prior to revealing a $1 million lottery win.