Dench, a grandmother from the U.S. state of Arizona, accidentally texted an invitation for Thanksgiving dinner to the wrong number.
[1] Hinton jokingly accepted the invitation, which started an annual tradition of the two celebrating the holiday together.
In 2016, Wanda Dench sent a group text to her family members to invite them to dinner on Thanksgiving.
[7] Hinton, a young black man, later stated that his initial friendship with Dench, an older white woman, "offered a holiday reprieve" from a racially tense election year.
[10] The Thanksgiving tradition continued as a small, socially distanced gathering before the holiday that year.
It was announced in December that Netflix was producing a movie about their story, titled "The Thanksgiving Text".
[15] In 2023, Hinton and Dench appeared as a team to compete on the TBS game show The Cube.
[16][17] The eighth annual Thanksgiving dinner was sponsored by Airbnb, with the promotion allowing for two selected winners to stay in Dench's home and join them for the holiday.