Wanda Dench and Jamal Hinton.Photo:Thomas Ingersoll
Thomas Ingersoll
Wanda Dench and Jamal Hinton are planning to share another Thanksgiving dinner — and this time, they’re bringing more guests to their annual holiday celebration with Airbnb’s help.
The duo, whoseunlikely friendshipbegan when Dench mistakenly texted a then-teenage Hinton to invite him to Thanksgiving dinner, has been going strong since 2016.
Seven years later, 24-year-old Hinton and his 66-year-old “Thanksgiving grandma” are partnering with Airbnb to invite two guests to book a stay at Dench’s home in Prescott, Arizona, and join them for the festivities. On Nov. 14, guestscan bookthe one-night stay (for the night of Nov. 20). The reservation will be priced at $16 — a nod to 2016, the year Wanda and Jamal spent their first Thanksgiving together.
“I think it is perfect,” Hinton tells PEOPLE. “I mean, me personally, I love meeting new people and building new friendships.”
It’s an attitude that has been at the root of their own friendship, which dates back to when Dench accidentally sent Hinton the Thanksgiving reminder text that was meant for her grandson.
“I was texting two of my grandsons and the one who had changed his phone number and didn’t tell me,” Dench recalls. “And it seems as though Jamal had gotten his old phone number and that’s how Jamal got my text.”
Then 17, Hinton told PEOPLE at the time, “The text said, ‘Thanksgiving at my house’ and it was from a grandma, but I was like, ‘When did my grandma learn to text!?’ So I asked her for a picture and it definitely was not my grandma.”
Jamal Hinton and Wanda Dench at Thanksgiving in 2019.Jamal Hinton/Instagram
Jamal Hinton/Instagram
Hinton jokingly texted Dench, “Can I still get a plate tho?” She replied, “Of course you can. That’s what grandmas do … feed everyone.”
Hinton previously told PEOPLE, “It was so unexpected, but she was just so sweet about it. It was a reminder that there are still some good people left in this world.”
Now, the friends — whose strong bond means they frequently get together, whether it’s a trip to the pumpkin patch, watching the Super Bowl or appearing together on a game show — are looking back on their wholesome tradition. That includes the national mood around the time it began.
Jamal Hinton and Wanda Dench.Thomas Ingersoll
“Once I got to know Jamal, for me, it was just an unlikely friendship," she adds. “And it wasn’t because of race, and it wasn’t because of religion. We’re both different religions, and all [kinds] of different in every way, except it was just a soul to a soul [connection].”
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Jamal Hinton and Wanda Dench in 2022.Jamal Hinton/Instagram
Hinton agrees, saying that the differences “have opened up” many opportunities for the two to connect.
“I never thought that there could be so many different things in common that we could have,” he shares.
Their partnership with Airbnb reminds them how they opened one another’s eyes to the power of unexpected relationships.
“I just adore him,” Dench says about Hinton. “I remember reading all the emails or the posts [on X, formerly Twitter] where young people were saying, ‘Oh my gosh, thank you so much. You’ve changed my life. You’ve given me faith in humanity.’ I had no idea that we had made such an impact on people and young people especially.”
And Hinton is looking forward to bringing new friends into the fold.
“It’s always amazing to meet someone and talk to them for a couple minutes when you’re out, or if anyone recognizes me from a Thanksgiving story or anything like that,” he says. “But to be able to sit down and actually talk to them for a full day, and especially sometimes with no media around or to really just get to know each other, I think that that’s going to be a beautiful friendship that can continue for years, kind of like me and Wanda.”
source: people.com
