A Newmarket man says he didn’t quite grasp what had happened when he carefully checked his Lotto Max ticket numbers over breakfast and saw he had matched seven numbers.
“I’ve been playing the lottery for 30 years, and when I counted all seven numbers, I was disappointed that I didn’t match the bonus number,” Mark Hanley said in a news release issued by the OLG Thursday.
“Then I realized there are only seven numbers with Lotto Max, and I got the big one.”
In a news release Thursday, the OLG said Hanley won the $65 million Lotto Max jackpot on March 28 after purchasing the winning ticket at New Town Variety on Yonge Street in Newmarket.
When he saw there was just one winner, Hanley yelled “touchdown!” and started “jumping for joy.”
He decided to wake his wife up to tell her the good news, asking her if she wanted to “kiss a millionaire.”
She initially said ‘no’ and tried to go back to sleep.
When she eventually came downstairs, he showed her the ticket, but she didn’t actually process the win until after she took a shower and started crying.
She cried again when they called their adult children to tell them they were coming to meet them with news to share.
Hanley said being able to help his children out financially feels like “a dream come true.”
The retired software engineer said he plans to share some of the winnings with immediate family members as a surprise.
“They’re probably not going to believe it at first because you don’t expect someone to suddenly come out of the blue and give you a gift like this,” he said.
Hanley said while he always hoped to win “a couple million,” he never dreamed he would win a prize this big and it will take some time for reality to settle in.
“I just feel so grateful and blessed that this win came my way,” he said.
He said his future plans include some travel to Italy and France, where he’s looking forward to sampling breads, wines and cheeses.
“I want to buy a castle, but wife won’t let me,” he joked.
The OLG says there have been 115 jackpot wins in Ontario since 2009. Including those jackpots and some 937 Maxmillions prizes, the OLG has doled out $9 billion in winnings to Lotto Max players over the past 16 years.
