An Auckland couple has claimed their $7.2 million Lotto prize, 11 days after they won it.
They purchased the winning Powerball ticket in Silverdale on September 12.
"The win was all over Facebook, so you really couldn't miss it. When my husband asked if I'd heard that a big Powerball prize had been won, I grabbed the ticket out of my handbag and waved it in front of him and jokingly said, 'Yip this is the winning ticket'," one of the anonymous winners told Lotto NZ.
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She put the ticket away in a drawer without checking it.
"We talked about it throughout the week here and there what we'd do, who we'd help...that kind of thing. We had a bit of a lucky feeling about our ticket but nothing serious enough to actually check it," she said.
In the weekend she took a pile of tickets to the shops, and then discovered that the most recent ticket was a First Division winner. She drove home immediately.
"I kept telling myself that it would just be a small prize - a nice little win. I was doing everything I could to just keep calm and get home," she said.
"I looked the results up online and checked them against my ticket the winning line jumped out at me and I popped a little star beside it. Not that I really needed to I'll never forget what it looked like."
When her husband got home she showed him the winning ticket on screen.
"We looked at each other and it kind of felt like confirmation we'd been talking about it all week, then there it was, as real as anything. It was a totally surreal moment, but also felt right," her husband told Lotto NZ.
They say they are going to take their time planning what to do with their winnings, to make it last for themselves and their children.
Newshub.
