Matthew Bazsika (24) and Emma Penman (21) both received a free trip home to Dunedin to be with their families for Christmas.
"It's really awesome. My family think it's awesome, too. It would have been another couple of years before I could have afforded to come home," Mr Bazsika said.
The former Bayfield High School pupil has been studying and working in Reading, Pennsylvania, in the United States, for the past four years.
"It's zero degrees there at the moment, so it's really nice to be back for summer and be able to put shorts on."
The trip back was a lot shorter and also had a certain amount of irony for Ms Penman, who has been living in Perth, Australia, for the past year.
"I've got two friends from Dunedin who are staying with me in Perth at the moment and I've had to leave them there to come back home," she said.
However, it also proved timely, as it would allow her to help plan her sister Catherine's wedding in Wanaka in January, the former Kavanagh College pupil said.
More than 1000 expatriate New Zealanders entered the "Bringing Home the Kiwis" competition, with 100 chosen for trips home, Marmite spokeswoman Hayley Findlay said.
"We selected people who had the most compelling stories and those people who had put the most effort into their entry."
Entries were received from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Iceland, Chile, Uganda, Hungary and Bahrain.
