“There are still good people in the world,” Jamal Hinton said.
Check out the stories of Thanksgiving miracles that continue into 2025
A chance invitation to Thanksgiving dinner sparks a decade-long friendship between a grandma and a complete stranger.
It was a random text message seen on the internet.
“Thanksgiving dinner will be held at my house on November 24th at 3 p.m. Please let me know if you are coming,” the sender wrote to her grandson — or so she thought.
“You’re not my grandmother. Can I still have a plate?” the 17-year-old stranger on the receiving end responded with a photo of himself.
“Of course you can. That’s a grandma’s job… to feed everyone (sic),” said the grandma, who was unaware that her grandson’s phone number had recently changed.
Wanda Dench and Jamal Hinton didn’t know it at the time, but their fateful encounter in November 2016 led to them spending a decade together, leading to a story of lasting friendship and caring that would continue to captivate the internet years later.
Those familiar with the story, of course, know that it went viral after Hinton posted a screenshot of the accidental text message on the social media platform then known as Twitter. In fact, the two celebrated that Thanksgiving and subsequent Thanksgivings together.
But even in a world of shortened attention spans and short-lived social media popularity, the story of Dench and Hinton still recurs every holiday season. After 10 Thanksgivings, the duo’s announcement earlier this month that their annual holiday dinner would be sponsored by Green Giant garnered millions of views on X.
One person answered, “It’s a family gathering that I look forward to every year.”
Hinton and Dench accept the fact that Thanksgiving planning is a national focus each year.
“I think it’s a story that people love to watch because we need to be reminded every day that there are still good people in the world,” Hinton told USA TODAY in a joint video interview with Dench on Nov. 19.
Hope during vacation
Dench and Hinton, who live about two hours away from each other in Arizona, never expected that their story would still resonate nine years and 10 Thanksgivings later.
Dench, now 68, remembers reading the comments on social media during his first year. The reaction was overwhelmingly positive, with people saying the story was a testament to the goodness of human nature. But she never expected it to bring her more than 15 minutes of fame.
“I didn’t expect the media to keep following us year after year. That surprised me because I thought people would get really tired of hearing us,” Dench said.
Ari Reitman, a professor of digital media and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University, said part of the reason social media continues to support Dench and Hinton’s friendship may be because the internet has an infinite memory.
“We may have seen that story, but other people haven’t been exposed to that story, and it creates a conversation. It creates a moment of maybe some kind of humanity and civility in a time when everything is polarized and things seem relatively bleak,” Reitman told USA TODAY. “And one of the things we want to connect with during the holidays is stories of joy and hope.”
While social media can be divisive, Reitman said the holiday season is especially a time of heightened compassion.
“The holidays are meant to bring us together,” Reitman said.
Quan Hsi, an associate professor of digital advertising at Southern Methodist University, also cited the holiday season as a factor in the story’s popularity.
“When we’re reading this story, it’s all about connection and making us feel warmth, gratitude and hope. So those are emotions that align very well with this particular time of the year,” Xie said.
In general, for other social media users, sharing uplifting stories like this is also an easy way to express altruistic values, Xie said.
“When we’re sharing content online, especially stories like this, it’s like a kind of shared aspiration, which means that the sharing action we take represents the kind of person we want to be and the kind of world we want to live in,” Xie said.
Still, Dench and Hinton stressed that the popularity of their story on social media has nothing to do with their friendship.
“I always knew that no matter what, me and Wanda would be connected no matter what, even if the media wasn’t there,” Hinton said.
thanksgiving part 10
Over the years, Hinton and Dench’s Thanksgiving and Live took many different forms.
Although Dench is now healthy after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 2024, the pair opted for a joint Instagram Live last year because she wasn’t well enough to travel for Thanksgiving.
And in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, they kept gatherings small. That year, Dench’s husband Ronnie, who had always been an ardent supporter of friendship, died.
Hinton, now 26 and working in sales, will host his and Dench’s 10th Thanksgiving together this year.
They partnered with Green Giant, which provides meals of the day.
“[Hinton]somehow got out of cooking again,” Dench quipped about the partnership.
Hinton said they will eat good food, play games and enjoy each other’s company. Even if they have a say, it won’t be the first time, and it certainly won’t be the last.
“Wanda and I didn’t know each other left or right, but we got together to eat dinner together on my favorite holiday,” Hinton said. “After that, we became good friends, best friends, and then family.”
Melina Khan is USA TODAY’s national trends reporter. Contact her at melina.khan@usatoday.com.
