Christy Barnett was reluctant about making the trip from her home in El Paso, Texas to Las Vegas.
You could hardly blame her: the 730-mile trip is an arduous one and for her husband, Sherman, the primary motivation was preserving the couple’s Seven Stars status with Caesars Rewards.
But the fact Christy and Sherman are a self-described “24/7 couple” who do everything together and are both avid slot players, meant eventually she acquiesced – a decision that would eventually land her in the money.
The couple have had notable careers racing stock cars, trucks and other vehicles and often enjoy weekend trips to Las Vegas.
On this particular jaunt, the couple would be staying at the well-known Caesars Palace, where Christy was soon quickly enthused by the Dragon Link machine in the high-roller salon, which offers the chance to win $1million (£823,000) for bets as low as $25 (£20).
With one lucky pull, Christy hit the jackpot, achieving a 45-year-long ambition in the process.
Speaking to Casinos.com about the moment, which was also caught via footage that went viral, she said: “Winning to me is winning. That’s just the way I was built. Everything is a competition to me. This was just like taking it to the next level.
“To me, it’s not so much the money, it’s the fact that I did it – that I actually hit a jackpot for $1million. I’ve been trying to do that for 45 years.”
The moment had actually been a very sizable cherry on top of an already successful day at the casino, with Christy having already hit nine jackpots (albeit much smaller ones) on the same morning.
She explained: “I played that same game from like 1pm in the afternoon until almost 11pm at night when it hit.
“When I went down in the morning, I hit nine jackpots in a row. I hit one on every machine I played. And I told myself, this is it, this is the day. I’m gonna hit that $1million. That was my plan and it actually happened.
“In the end, I hit like 19 jackpots that day. There were four machines together, all the same kind, and while I was waiting to get paid on one, I played one next to it – put in $100 (£82) and that hit for $16,500 (£13,582). So I had a lot of money to play with. [In total], I hit $97,000 (£79,847) of jackpots before the $1million.”
As Christy experienced, such a moment is difficult to believe, and she’s explained she didn’t sleep for around five days after.
She added: “On Saturday night I laid there awake the whole night, so at like 9am in the morning, I said I gotta get up. And when I did, I thought, you know, this might just be a really vivid dream. I better go look in the safe and make sure. So I went to the safe and the check was there and I was like, no, it’s real.
“My husband was still asleep and I went down and played some more. When he came down later, that was when he finally wrapped his head around the idea that it was $1million and then he was jumping around the rest of the trip.
“He was telling people in the bathroom, telling people in restaurants, telling cab drivers. He’s telling everybody, ‘You know my wife just won a million dollars’.”
And what plans do Christy and her husband have for celebrating their winnings? Keep playing, of course.
“We’re pretty simple people. We don’t party and do all that kind of stuff. We play and we race and we work and that’s all we do.
“We’re so blessed. We’ve worked really hard with our business and are very successful and don’t need anything.
“Everybody asks me, are you gonna buy a Corvette or a Maserati or something? I don’t need anything like that. There’s a possibility I’ll get a new race car. But anything else? No.
“I don’t know what I did to deserve it. I’ve tried to be a good person my entire life. I have more than most people have, and I’m so thankful.
“When I hit that jackpot, it was almost like a burden off my shoulders. I told my husband, you know what? I don’t ever have to play a slot machine again. I reached the goal and maybe I need to find something else to do.
“But he and I do everything together. We’re 24/7. He likes to play. I like to play. So I’ll keep playing.
“I just wanted to know the feeling of what it was like to win a million dollars, not to have the million dollars. To know what the feeling was like to hit it, that was more exciting to me.”
For someone who didn’t initially want to make the trip, she certainly knows what that feeling’s like now.
The NHS advises to get support if you’re experiencing gambling-related harms
