CALAIS – Sweethearts who recently retired within a month of each other learned on Valentine’s Day that their fixed income became a whole lot sweeter. Friends who live in this community say it couldn’t have happened to a nicer couple.

George “Bud” Barnard, 72, and his longtime companion, Irene Gallway, 65, learned – for sure – on Sweetheart Day that they were the top prize winners for a new Tri-State Lottery online game called Paycheck. The couple won $2,500 a month for the next 10 years. Barnard is headed to Augusta on Monday to collect their winnings.

Barnard bought the winning ticket Tuesday night at the store where he used to work, Paradis Shop ‘n Save on South Street. He had stopped working at the store briefly before returning to work there bagging groceries when he was 70 years old. He retired again in December.

Barnard has been buying lottery tickets at the store for years.

Gallway retired in January. She was a cook at the Washington County Community College’s Childcare Center.

Even though Gallway isn’t a gambler, Barnard is giving half his winnings to her.

“This last week she said to me, ‘You’re wasting money on those stupid tickets,’ and I said, ‘Well, if you don’t put a line in the water, you can’t catch a fish,'” he said. “She was telling someone just the other day, ‘I’m glad he didn’t listen to me.'”

Barnard described how he learned about the win. It was Tuesday night.

“I’d been at Dunkin’ Donuts and I started home and I thought, ‘I forgot to get my numbers’ and I turned around and went back,” he said.

He bought the ticket at 5:30 p.m.; the drawing was at 7 p.m. He decided to return to the store to check his numbers.

“Irene had a sewing party here [at their house] and when she does that I get out,” he said. At the store they gave him a list of the winning numbers. “I thought, ‘It can’t be,'” he said.

Gallway said she was “dumbstruck” when she learned of the win.

The win came on top of a tragedy.

Gallway’s 92-year-old mother, Annie Doten, who lived on her own, fell outside her house the week before.

Her family still doesn’t understand why she went outside. It was a bitter-cold night. “I had talked to her the night before,” Gallway said. “The next day they found her. They rushed her to the hospital, but she died the next day from hypothermia.”

Gallway said she regretted not being able to tell her mother about the win, but said her mother was a Christian and she believed she now was smiling down on her.

The win will help the retired couple. “The thing of it is it will make us comfortable,” she said. “Because retirement isn’t everything that it’s cracked up to be, but you can’t work forever.”

Ask people in Calais and they will tell you there is no couple more deserving.

Barnard donates his time at the local nursing home. “I said one time in church, if more people got into the nursing homes and see the people, even if it’s a half an hour, what a difference it makes to them,” he said. “But you get tired of hearing the excuse, ‘I don’t have time.’ They’ve got time, they’ve got to take it.”

The couple sing in their local church.

Now that they have a little extra, Barnard is going to Syracuse, N.Y., to visit his children and grandchildren. The couple will go to Indiana at the end of the year to visit his sister. “Just makes everything much easier,” he said of the windfall. “We have our Social Security and now this.”

Gallway would like to go back to England. “I was over there two years ago,” she said. Barnard said he wouldn’t be going. “They do an awful lot of walking and I have arthritis in my feet. I’ll stay here with the dog,” he said with a laugh.

Tammy Ginn, who attends church with the couple, said both were generous with their time and their help. She was pleased they had won.