Grandma spends third Thanksgiving with teen after text message gaffe

The unlikely friendship struck up between an Arizona teen and a grandmother has continued to blossom with the pair celebrating their third Thanksgiving together.

When 17-year-old Jamal Hinton received a message from an unknown number in 2016 inviting him to Thanksgiving dinner, he duly obliged.

The text was from grandmother Wanda Dench and, unknowing to her, the recipient of the message wasn’t her grandson but was the Phoenix teen instead.

When discovering she had the wrong number via a hilarious exchange of texts between the new acquaintances, Ms Dench upheld her offer and welcomed Hinton into her home.

After posing for a selfie together during their 2016 Thanksgiving dinner to the delight of eager Twitter followers keeping a close eye on the pair’s budding relationship, they decided to make a tradition of it.

“Just being friendly, I gained a new friend. A new tradition on Thanksgiving and I love it,” he told NBC4 last year.

“It was a reminder that there are still some good people left in this world,” he told People magazine.

Ms Dench echoed the teen’s sentiments, telling NBC News the random encounter had given her “faith in humanity”.

Mr Hinton returned to Ms Dench’s family home in 2017, and this week he made his third annual visit to the family.

“2016, 2017…… 2018 ” Mr Hinton captioned three selfies of the pair on Friday taken from the last three Thanksgivings.

The pair’s relationship goes further than just Thanksgiving, with the two exchanging Christmas gifts and Mr Hinton even calling Ms Dench his “adopted grandmother”.

Now 19, Mr Hinton even brought his girlfriend round to the Dench household for this year’s tradition.