A random text message led to a Thanksgiving tradition now in its seventh year.
Jamal Hinton confirmed Tuesday in a post on Instagram that he will spend this Thanksgiving with Wanda Dench, who in 2016 thought she was writing to her grandson to invite him to Thanksgiving, but was actually writing to Hinton.
“To answer all your questions, yes, the 7th Annual Thanksgiving is on! See you Thursday!” Hinton said in the caption of a photo of him standing next to Dench outside the Cheesecake Factory restaurant.
The two first met in 2016 when Dench, from Mesa, Arizona, sent a text inviting Hinton to dinner. It was intended for her grandson, who had changed his phone number. Instead, Hinton, who was 17 at the time, got the message while sitting in class at Desert Vista High School.
The two figured out the mistake and then sent each other a selfie, with Hinton asking if he could still come. Dench wrote: “Of course you can. That’s what grandmothers do … they feed everybody.”
Hinton has been documenting the celebration on his social media every year. In 2019, he shared a picture, writing: “Happy to have such wonderful people in our lives.”
After Dench’s husband died, they still spent the holiday together.
“This Thanksgiving, along with all the upcoming holidays, will not be the same as the last, but we will do our best,” Hinton wrote in a 2020 post. “Rest in peace Lonnie and everyone else we have lost this year, we will miss you. Thank you for being in our lives.”
In a 2021 interview with azfamily.comDench and Hinton reflected on their friendship.
“I would have missed out on a great relationship,” Dench said when asked what would have happened if she hadn’t invited Hinton years ago. “I changed my view of the younger generation a lot, and now that I look back on all these years, I didn’t change their lives; they changed mine.’
GMA and CNN Wire contributed to this report.
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