In 2016, Wanda Dench sent out a group text message inviting her family members to a Thanksgiving dinner in Mesa, Arizona; however, the grandmother had accidently sent the invitation to Jamal Hinton, a Phoenix high schooler whom she had never met. It was an honest mistake that ultimately led to an unlikely friendship.
Hinton told TIME it was "kind of weird" to be invited to a stranger's family dinner, but said he now looks forward to the tradition every year.
"What made me want to go was that I went and actually met her and she was pretty nice. So I decided that I'd just go and enjoy the time with her. It turned out to be a great thing," he said, before complimenting Dench's cooking. "...She's a great person to just hang out with ... We don't watch TV or anything. We just sit at the table for a couple of hours and talk the whole time and tell stories and see how we've been. Time kind of just flies, we don't even realize how long we’ve been there. They're really good company."
You can check out footage from Hinton and Dench's 2019 Thanksgiving above.
