Winner waited days to confirm a lottery jackpot just to savor the feeling

The Maryland man had a gut feeling but avoided checking — three days later, the lottery confirmed his instincts.

Todd Betzold

News writer

Published Mar 07, 2025, 13:40 EST

Most lottery players can't check their tickets fast enough — but not this Maryland couple. When they saw that someone had hit the $3.3 million Multi-Match jackpot, they had a hunch it was them.

But instead of confirming it right away, they did something unusual: they waited. For three days, they held onto the thrilling possibility that they were millionaires before finally seeking out the truth. And when they did? Let's just say it was worth the wait.

Didn't want to jinx it

A Baltimore City couple has been buying lottery tickets together for years. The retired couple loves playing the Multi-Match draw game, and the game returned that affection with one of the largest jackpot prizes in the game's history. However, it all came with a twist.

When picking up the winnings, “Amazing Racer,” the anonymous team spokesperson, told lottery officials, “I saw on the lottery website that someone had won the Multi-Match jackpot and was disappointed.” However, he then saw where the winning ticket was sold, and then he got very excited.

The winning ticket for that February 24 Multi-Match drawing was sold at J Convenience, located at 8765 Satyr Hill Road in Parkville. That just happens to be the retailer that the lucky couple visited the day before and bought their Multi-Match tickets.

The winning numbers for that drawing were 3, 6, 16, 22, 26, and 33. However, the former Baltimore City employee didn't compare the numbers on his $6 ticket to those winning numbers. Heck, he didn't even visit a lottery retailer to scan his ticket to see if it was a winner.

He told lottery officials:

As crazy as it sounds, I didn't want to jinx it. I just wanted to hold on to that feeling that I'd won as long as possible.

Making their way to lottery headquarters

While believing that they had won the $3.3 million jackpot for that night's drawing, the couple did manage to make it three whole days before finally trying to get confirmation of their win.

“Amazing Racer,” told lottery officials, “When I scanned the ticket, I saw a message about visiting the lottery. I knew that was a good sign.”

Now, they knew they had a big winner on their hands, yet the couple still didn't check the winning numbers to see if they matched the numbers on their ticket. They said:

We figured that we'd won something, so we made an appointment to visit the lottery.

And visit the lottery headquarters is what the couple did recently. It wasn't until they made it to the headquarters and turned in the winning ticket that they found out they matched all of the winning numbers to win the $3.3 million jackpot, the sixth largest in the game's history.

The couple, who said they hadn't slept in three days, told lottery officials, “What a wonderful relief.”

Now that they know how much they won and have the money in their hands, they told lottery officials they plan on taking care of all family debt and giving some money to their favorite charities and their church.

For selling the winning ticket, J Convenience received a $3,300 bonus from the state lottery.

Biggest Multi-Match jackpots

Multi-Match is a very popular in-state draw game in Maryland. This happened to be the first jackpot win of 2025. However, the game's jackpot was hit eight times in 2024 and 10 times in 2023.

With this being the sixth-largest jackpot win in the game's history, we wanted to share the other jackpots making the top five payouts: