I have two (weak) connections to folks connected to Knuth. The first is in the bibliography for a paper he wrote in High School--check out Fibonacci Nim. I got to work with the author of the paper for a number of years. Exceedingly bright.

The other was a key part of the MWC story. Bob called up Knuth asking if he knew of any bright programmers and Steve had been a masters student of Knuth's.