The married Dunedin couple who won $13.3 million in Powerball's $40 million draw on Saturday claimed their prize in Auckland yesterday and went out for a burger to celebrate after collecting Otago's biggest Lotto win.
There were three winning tickets on Saturday, which won $13,368,688 each.
The other two winning tickets were bought from Oparau Roadhouse in Te Awamutu and on MyLotto to a player in Hamilton. The winners are still outstanding.
The Dunedin couple want to remain anonymous but released a statement through Lotto NZ yesterday.
The wife said she knew straight away they had won the top prize but her husband was harder to convince.
"I was watching the live Lotto draw, and circled all of our winning numbers, including the Powerball,'' the wife said.
She was "excited'' and "hollered'' for her husband, who was in another room.
The husband did not expect the news to be about Lotto.
"My first thought was 'oh no, I bet she's pregnant'.''
When his wife showed him the Lotto ticket and the winning numbers, he did not believe they had won.
The couple phoned friends to help them recheck the ticket, the wife said.
Despite everyone saying "you've won'' her husband remained unconvinced, she said.
"Even when we found out that the winning ticket had been bought from Pak'n Save Dunedin, which is where we bought out ticket from, he was like 'nah, no way'.''
The winners asked Fresh Choice Green Island owners John and Julie Moyle to open the Dunedin supermarket on Saturday night to check their ticket, the wife said.
"The Lotto lady had to get out of bed to come down and help check the ticket for us. It wasn't until the Lotto machine made the winning noise and we saw the prize claim receipt that he finally believed it.''
On Sunday, the husband carried around a copy of the claim receipt with $13,368,688 printed on it.
"I pulled it out of my pocket to look at about 100 times,'' he said.
"As for the winning ticket, I kept it in my undies drawer until we had to bring it up to Auckland to collect our prize. No-one would ever go looking in there.
"It's funny because I was in my man cave out the back of the house a couple of weeks ago with my buddy and we were talking about what we'd do if we won Lotto.
"We were talking about bikes, muscle cars, houses.
"It's amazing to think I can do all that now if I want to.
"At one point we were talking about buying a whole street of houses and getting all of our mates to move in. I'm not sure I'll do that, though,'' he said.
The winners claimed their prize in person at the Lotto NZ head office in Auckland yesterday, the wife said.
The win was the biggest in Otago since Lotto began in 1987.
"To win this amount of money is incredible and we keep thinking about how we'll be able to help people out with our winnings. We feel so incredibly lucky.
"But we'll stay the same people. In fact, I think we might go out for burgers tonight to celebrate.''
