Joe and Jess Thwaite are the UK’s biggest-ever National Lottery winners after securing the £184million Euromillions jackpot.
The couple, who are in their 40s and from Gloucestershire, have gone public at the Ellenborough Park hotel in Cheltenham following their win.
Mrs Thwaite, 46, and Mr Thwaite, 49, have been married for 11 years.
The pair have two primary school-age children, also Mr Thwaite has two children who are at university from a previous marriage.
Mrs Thwaite runs a hairdressing salon and Mr Thwaite is a communication sales engineer - both of them still going to work on the day they won the jackpot.
Mrs Thwaite said: “The win gives us time to dream which we haven’t had before. We’ve had one week to think about this and we now have time to share lots of experiences and go on adventures with our family and friends.”
The communication sales engineer said he was in disbelief when he found out about the win through the National Lottery app.
He said: “Then I looked at the amount and I put the phone down. And I picked the phone up again, and I looked at the amount again. I first thought it was in thousands.”
But then he “started counting the digits”. He added: “Amazing, but also surreal.”
He said he even waited for his sleeping wife to wake up to her alarm 20 minutes later before telling her the good news.
“I’ve got a secret to tell you,” he said he told her.
To which she responded: “Don’t be stupid, don’t be silly.”
Mr Thwaite said his luck is usually “pretty terrible” when it comes to the lottery but by 4pm on that fateful Tuesday he thought he “better buy a ticket” because of the jackpot.
He said: “I normally buy them when it’s a good amount, so when there’s a lot of money I’ll put it on. I use the app, and have a quick check a couple of times a week and I’ll put it on.
“But generally my luck is pretty terrible, to be honest with you.”
His wife added: “He tries to convince me to buy them thinking I’ll have more luck, but actually it’s him.”
The couple have been trying to buy a house for some time now.
“You go on Right Move and you set your limits on what you can afford, and in the past everything we’ve kind of wanted is far beyond what we can afford so I thought I don’t need to filter, I can actually just look at anything,” he said.
The win has made them richer than Sir Tom Jones or Harry Kane as well as securing them a place in the top 1,000 of Britain’s richest people.
Their winning numbers were 3, 25, 27, 28 and 29 - plus the Lucky Star numbers 4 and 9.
The record was previously held by an anonymous ticket-holder who banked £170 million in October 2019.
