In return, she gets every cent he wins.
"His theory is that if he gives me the money he can keep playing poker," she said last night.
It's an agreement which saw her bank account increase by $60,000 on Sunday night, after Mr Yates finished runner-up in the 2011 Pokerstars.net New Zealand Poker Tour Queenstown-SkyCity Snowfest Championship.
The week-long tournament's final table began with nine players remaining from the starting field of 127, representing 19 countries.
The players battled for $342,900. After 12 hours, Marcel Schreiner (Germany) took the title and $94,300 prize money with a full house.
"It's a deal. She's not allowed to complain [about] me playing poker and she gets all the winnings."
Mrs McKenzie-Yates, who is in Wellington working on filming The Hobbit, watched the tournament online through a live stream.
While she kept a steady eye on the poker chips, she was unsure what she would do with her husband's latest - and greatest - windfall.
"Just dealing with this, so not really sure, sorry," she said.
Mr Yates, a businessman whose interests include Tardis bar in Queenstown, 3Fold Print and Active New Zealand, won the right to compete in Queenstown by winning a satellite tournament.
While his work commitments kept him "pretty busy", he found time to play poker in a "prestigious home game" in the resort.
Called "Panorama Poker" because the first games were hosted at a Panorama Tce property, Mr Yates said it had grown and established a reputation big enough to attract poker players passing through Queenstown.
John Waterman, of Nelson, was third on Sunday night, winning $35,150.
