About

Thanksgiving Grandma refers to a viral story about a grandmother texting a Thanksgiving invitation to the wrong number and inviting the recipient to dinner after he corrected her. The story received media attention after the strangers met for Thanksgiving two years in a row.

Origin

On November 15th, 2016, Twitter ^[2]user @RonaldDoee posted a series of text messages from a wrong number. The conversation shows a grandma inviting someone who is not their grandson to Thanksgiving dinner, the two sharing selfies with each other and deciding to spend Thanksgiving together regardless. The post was captioned, "Somebody grandma is coming in clutch this year!! Ayee!!!" Within one year, the tweet (shown below) received more than 213,000 retweets and 426,000 likes.

Spread

On November 24th, 2016, @RonaldDoee^[2] followed up with a picture of grandmother Wanda Dench and text recipient Jamal Hinton together with the caption "So this just happened." Within one year, the post (shown below) received more than 66,000 retweets and 100,000 likes.

After the tweet was posted, several media outlets covered the popularity of the story, including HuffPost,^[3] Mashable,^[4] CBS,^[5] CNN^[6] and more.

The following year, on November 23rd, 2017, @kingjamal08^[7] posted a picture of him with Dench in 2017. He captioned the post, "2016-2017 thanksgiving." The post (shown below) received more than 70,000 retweets and 205,000 likes in less than four days.

Several news outlets covered the reunion including HuffPost,^[8] CNN,^[12] CBS,^[13] The Daily Mail,^[14] Mashable,^[15] USA Today,^[9] BuzzFeed^[10] and more. On November 26th, Twitter^[11] published a Moments page about the response to the story.

2018

On November 22nd, Hinton tweeted photographs of the previous Thanksgivings with Dench along with a new photograph for 2018. Within 48 hours, the tweet gained over 551,000 likes and 125,000 retweets. The following day, a screenshot of the tweet was posted to /r/BlackPeopleTwitter^[16] with the title "This is the kinda positivity I need in my life right now," which received upwards of 58,000 points (86% upvoted) and 1,000 comments over the next 24 hours.

On November 23rd, Hinton uploaded a video in which he arrives at Dench's house, where they participated in a Q&A (shown below).

Lonnie Dench's Death

On April 8th, 2020, Jamal Hinton tweeted^[17] that Lonnie, the husband of Wanda Dench, had died of COVID-19. Earlier that week, Hinton tweeted that the two had been hospitalized with COVID-19 and pneumonia. He wrote, "As some of you may have already found out tonight Lonnie did not make it… he passed away Sunday morning but Wanda told me all the love and support he was receiving put a huge smile on his face so I thank every single one of you guys for that!" The tweet received more than 300,000 likes and 73,000 retweets (shown below).

Hinton also tweeted^[18] an update on Wanda's health. He wrote,^[18] "Also for those asking Wanda is not sick."

2021

On November 14th, 2021, Hinton tweeted a text conversation between himself and Dench, confirming that he would be attending Thanksgiving at Dench's house for the sixth straight year.

On December 2nd, Hinton announced that their story would be adapted into a Netflix original movie.

Search Interest

External References