Could we look back someday and say that Warren Buffett’s greatest genius was finding amazingly talented people to replace him?

Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-A, BRK-B) investors certainly hope so.

Buffett, 86, hasn’t been shy about acknowledging his own mortality and that at some point others will be running his money-making machine of a company. And while Buffett hasn’t named a successor as of yet, he has tabbed a pair of money managers, Todd Combs (in 2010) and Ted Weschler (in 2011), to begin to take over the key investment operations of Berkshire.

I recently sat down with Buffett, Combs and Weschler in Omaha for a rare three-way interview. What emerges is that Combs and Weschler are actually a whole lot like Buffett and his partner Charlie Munger.

Of course, that’s hardly a coincidence. Buffett and Munger were looking for as close to clones as they could find—at least in terms of investing prowess. Both Combs and Weschler are understated, super-smart and spend most of their days doing the same thing Buffett and Munger do, with their noses in documents.

How Todd and Ted caught Warren’s attention

“These are the only two guys we could find that read as much as we did,” Buffett says with a laugh.

Actually Buffett’s not really kidding.

View photos Warren Buffett and his deputies, Ted Weschler and Todd Combs More

People may be curious how Todd Combs (pronounced like “combs his hair”) and Ted Weschler (pronounced “weshler”) got what most would consider to be the most plumb jobs in investment business.

Let’s start with Combs and let him tell us how he landed the job:

“I met Warren through Charlie. I called Charlie up just randomly. I had always wanted to meet him. And we hit it off,” Combs says. “We had breakfast for three or four hours. And luckily he called me a couple weeks later, and we continued discussions. And this kinda went back and forth for a couple months.”

Combs added: “And at one point in time, I was out having breakfast or lunch with him, and he said, ‘You know, you should really meet Warren.’ And he then, in true Charlie and Berkshire style, tried to convince me why this was necessary, and how much I would enjoy it and so forth. So I called Warren up. And flew to Omaha, and we met. So that’s how that happened.”

Easy peasy, right?

As for Weschler, well he had to cough up $5,252,722 to get the job. Seriously! Here’s that story: Back in 2010 an anonymous bidder paid $2,626,311 in a charity auction to have lunch with Buffett. And then the following year a bidder won the lunch by upping the bid by $100, to $2,626,411.

Turns out the winning bidder in both years was Weschler, then running his highly successful hedge fund, Peninsula, out of Charlottesville, Virginia. Buffett was so impressed with Weschler that he offered him a job.

View photos Ted Weschler More

So what are Buffett’s two money managers like? Well both Combs, 46, and Weschler, 56, appear to be calm, thoughtful and friendly. And they’re both in great shape. Combs plays tennis and Weschler runs almost every day. Buffett suggested the two would whip me in the upcoming Berkshire 5k coming up in Omaha on May 7, the day after the annual meeting—and I bet he’s right.

And of course Berkshire shareholders should love the fact they they’re both decades younger than Buffett and Munger. That means if they’re successful they will be doing their jobs for many, many years.

Lots of the time to read at work

I was very curious to find out what it was like to work for Buffett. I asked Weschler first.

“It’s terrific. In many ways, it doesn’t change much from my prior world, where I ran a fund,” Weschler says. “I’ve always been kind of a one man band, analytically. I spend the vast majority of my day reading. I try to make about half of that reading random. Things like newspapers and trade periodicals.”

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