An elementary school teacher, a special education teacher and another public school worker in Maryland shared one of three winning tickets for a $656 million (€502 million) lottery, the richest jackpot in US history, lottery officials said yesterday.

If it can’t be you these are precisely the people that you would want to see win the lottery

The Maryland winners, who call themselves ‘The Three Amigos’, each will take home $34.997 million (€26.769 million) from the Mega Millions lottery after taxes.

They chose to remain anonymous – as as Maryland law allows them to do – but were described as a woman in her 20s, a man in his 40s and another woman in her 50s, lottery officials said.

Two other winning tickets were sold in Kansas, where a winner came forward, and Illinois, where a winner has not yet surfaced.

“If it can’t be you these are precisely the people that you would want to see win the lottery,” Maryland Lottery director Stephen Martino said at a news conference.

“They were modest, they were, I think, humbled by this stroke of luck that they have received,” he said. “I think at times they were a bit overwhelmed.”

All three hold down multiple jobs and plan to return to work this week, lottery officials said.

The three lucky Maryland players invested $20 each (€15) to play the $1 (€0.76c) game a total of 60 times at three different locations. It was the first time they had played the game together.

The youngest of the group held onto the tickets and checked them immediately after the late night drawing on March 30.

“I had all 60 tickets spread across my floor,” she is quoted as saying in a lottery press release. “Once I realised one was a winner, I called my two friends right away.”

The older woman had forgotten about the drawing and fallen asleep, only to be awakened by her friend’s persistent phone call advising, “Get dressed. We’re coming over right now.”