Let’s face it: between wrangling family members and figuring out how to brine a turkey, the holiday season can be stressful. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some sweet moments that make the whole season worth it.
One story has touched our collective hearts year after year. In 2016, then-teen Jamal Hinton shared a hilarious and heartwarming exchange between himself and Wanda Dench, who will now forever be known as “Thanksgiving Grandma.”
Dench, who is white, sent an innocuous test to her grandson, inviting him to Thanksgiving, not realizing he’d changed his number. Instead, she reached Hinton, who asked for a photo of the woman claiming to be his grandma.
When Hinton, who is Black, opened the photo of a white woman who was clearly not his grandma, he wrote, “You not my grandma. Can I still get a plate, though?”
To his surprise, Dench told him he was welcome.
Hinton drove to Tempe, Arizona, and the pair shared their first Thanksgiving together. Eight years later, Hinton, 24, is still a beloved presence at the Dench, 66, family Thanksgiving table. And now, more people can share the love.
Hinton and Dench have decided to team up with Airbnb to open up the dinner table to even more guests. Airbnb guests can now enter for a chance to win an early Thanksgiving dinner on Nov. 20 with Dench and Hinton and an overnight stay at her home in Arizona City. The stay will cost $16, a cute nod to the year the two met.
Dench told USA Today that she was thrilled to be able to celebrate with even more people. “I said from the jump of our first Thanksgiving that I always wanted to have more people join our Thanksgiving and be able to celebrate with us and have the amount of fun that we have together,” she said.