A text sent to the wrong number has produced an unexpected Thanksgiving tradition, with a young man rejoining the family that inadvertently invited him for dinner last year.

Last year, Wanda Dench attempted to contact her grandson about Thanksgiving plans. But the message went instead to Jamal Hinton, who showed up. This year all the invitations were on purpose.

“For him to continue with the relationship, I'm just really pleasantly surprised,” Ms Dench told the Arizona Republic. “We're more of extended family and, best of all, friends.”

Back in 2016 Ms Dench's invite to the 17-year-old was chronicled by Mr Hinton in a series of wildly popular social media posts.

“That’s what grandma’s do…feed everyone” Ms Dench wrote in response to Mr Hinton’s request to accept the invite to join her family for food.

Video posted of their initial meeting showed the two exchanging a hug as Mr Hinton arrived at Ms Dench’s Mesa, Arizona home. “She welcomed me into her house so that shows me how great of a person she is,” Mr Hinton told ABC 15 Arizona. “I'm thankful for people like that.”

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“She welcomed me into her house so that shows me how great of a person she is,” Mr Hinton told ABC 15 Arizona. “I'm thankful for people like that.”

Now it looks like that holiday get-together wasn’t a one-off, with Mr Hinton garnering a fresh round of enthusiasm when he posted an image of himself with Ms Dench for Thanksgiving this year.

A tweet juxtaposing images of the two together last year and the two standing together for this Thanksgiving drew well over 200,000 “likes,” an outpouring that Mr Hinton acknowledged soon after.

“Thank you for all the Love everyone!” he wrote.

The two kept up their relationship between Thanksgivings, Mr Hinton told BuzzFeed, saying Ms Dench contacts him “a lot”.