Nagging wife, sausage help man win $4.2M lottery

[December 09, 2008]  WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) -- A "nagging" wife who pushed her husband to buy a lottery ticket helped scoop the $4.2 million ($7.7 million New Zealand dollar) first prize -- with only minutes to spare. The man from New Zealand's biggest city, Auckland, bought his ticket just two minutes before ticket sales closed Saturday night.

"My wife had been nagging me all week to get a ticket, so I when saw the Lotto sign ... I sprinted in to get the ticket before they closed," said the man, who asked not to be identified -- normal practice among lottery winners in New Zealand .

"I must have been their last customer of the night," he said, adding that the young married couple had had a "rough" couple of years, reduced to one income after having children.

"I have never been so glad to listen to my wife's nagging," the man said Tuesday.

He discovered their newly won fortune Sunday thanks to his wife's request for a barbecued sausage.

Out shopping for bargains, the man said he didn't have enough money to buy his wife the sausage she'd asked him for. So he decided to check his Saturday lottery ticket in case he'd won a small prize.

"I could not believe it when they said I was actually the big winner," he said.

When he showed the printout to his wife, she initially thought they had won $4,200 (NZ$7,700).

"When she realized how much it really was, she fell to the floor, and then said: 'but all I wanted was a sausage.'"

[Associated Press]

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