“Thanksgiving dinner is at my house on November 24th at 3PM.”
That was the simple text sent by one Arizona grandmother to her grandson back in 2016. The problem was, Wanda Dench sent the message to the wrong number and it ended up being read by 17-year-old Jamal Hinton.
When Hinton replied to ask who it was, Dench simply said “Your grandma.” The pair then swapped photos to prove their identities, before realizing the mistake.
“You not my grandma. Can I still get a plate tho?” Hinton replied.
“Of course you can. That’s what grandmas do… feed everyone,” Dench shot back.
And with that, the pair hit it off. That was back in 2016, and the unlikely duo are now celebrating Thanksgiving for the fourth consecutive year!
This year, however, Hinton and his girlfriend decided to return the favor and invited Dench and her husband over for dinner.
“The first dinner, I don’t think we really got to talk that much, because it was so much going on at the moment,” Hinton recalled to TODAY. “But after that, when we actually got to sit down and have dinner and get to know each other, it was actually pretty great.”
“I love it,” Hinton said of his newly formed friendship and the broad media coverage their story is getting. “I love how people are coming together and seeing the good in this story, and how much the world loves it. It’s a great vibe.”
“[Wanda] is a really good person,” he told Good Morning America. “I really enjoy the time I spend with her.”
As for Dench, she said that growing up as a military kid meant she traveled around a lot and was always open to meeting new people.
“We moved around a lot so I was always going to new places. And so strangers were not strangers to me,” she told ABC News. “Family is more than blood. It’s the people you want to be with.”