Life after the jackpot: Iowa Powerball winners give their free advice for lottery winners

Celebrating the win are, from left, Mary Neubauer of the Iowa Lottery, Mary Lohse, Brian Lohse and lottery CEO Terry Rich Photo: Rodney White, Des Moines Register

A couple who won $202 million in a 2012 Powerball game gave some free advice for Powerball and other large jackpot winners.

Brian and Mary Lohse won their $202 million from Powerball in 2012.

Brian and Mary Lohse talk about their Powerball win Photo: Powerball

Everyone - including the lotteries themselves - tells lottery winners to disappear for their security and safety.

Yet this Iowa couple ignored that advice when they won their US Powerball jackpot.

In an unusual move for big lottery winners, Iowa $202 million Powerball jackpot winners Brian and Mary Lohse (left) have given tv interviews, appeared in newspapers and on the internet Photo: Powerball

They broke all the rules for winners - and it hasn't appeared to change their lives. And that may be the secret.

Brian Lohse, 54, a former insurance attorney in Bondurant, Iowa, and his wife Mary won the second-largest win in Iowa, and have since made several public charitable donations.

The couple turned their fortune into a community investment by building a gym and grocery store from the ground up.

They still meet with their financial and legal teams on a regular basis.

"You may plan to work and it may be a good idea and you think you’re going to, but it suddenly becomes a full-time job," Brian says.

Brian Lohse at the Bondurant grocery store. It was purchased by Fareway in 2023 Photo: Des Moines Register/composite

According to a report in USA Today, they had done a number of things differently from other major jackpot winners:

They kept the same telephone number they'd had for 14 years.
They became the most public Iowans to ever win a big lottery.
The couple set up the Lohse Family Foundation and began funneling money to causes they had championed before they won the lottery.
They built a $4.5 million grocery store because their hometown needed one.
Both spent their time in a new type of job -- writing out checks and gleefully watching how it changes people's lives.
They paid off the mortgage for their Bondurant Federated Church.
They donated $3 million to a new football stadium for Bondurant-Farrar High School.
Helped a local cancer fundraiser set a record and donated more toward city park improvements.

The pair funneled money to family and friends far and wide, even buying a new Mustang for their church pastor.

"What's amazing is what a focus of your life that money is," Mary said. "Everything revolves around money, especially when you don't have it."

The couple chose the cash option and received $90.9 million after taxes.

The Lohses celebrate their $202.1M win at the Powerball check presentation Photo: Powerball

After all that giving, one of the items on the Lohses' lottery skeleton plan was just to have fun. He got a new pickup. She got a new SUV. They built a cabin in Minnesota and are building a new home in Bondurant.

Mary still spends money on lottery tickets and they took a couple of trips - even making a call from Hawaii on one of them.

"I'm sitting out here with the kids looking over the water in Maui," Brian said. "That's not something I've ever dreamed of doing before."

However, his relaxed life didn’t last long. After winning the lottery, Brian Lohse ended his practice of law and went into politics.

A member of the Republican Party, Brian was elected to the Iowa House of Representatives in 2018.

READ MORE: USA Today

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