He was accidentally invited to Thanksgiving by 'grandma.' Four years later, he's still going

Ryan W. Miller | USA TODAY

What started as an accident has turned into a sweet holiday tradition.

Jamal Hinton received a random text in 2016 inviting him to a Thanksgiving dinner with a family that wasn't his. Four years later, he's planning to share the dinner table yet again with Wanda Dench, the "grandma" who first invited him.

"Time kind of just flies, we don’t even realize how long we’ve been there. They’re really good company," Hinton told TIME, describing their dinners together.

The unlikely pair's interaction went viral when Hinton, then 17, shared a screenshot of their texts on Twitter.

Dench, thinking she had texted her grandson who had recently changed his phone number, invited Hinton to Thanksgiving dinner at her home in Mesa, Arizona.

Somebody grandma is coming in clutch this year!! Ayee!!! pic.twitter.com/QGrx83nHLl — Jamal Hinton (@kingjamal08) November 15, 2016

Hinton was confused and asked for a photo of the person who had texted him. "I actually did think it was my grandma," Hinton told The Arizona Republic in 2016.

When he saw the photo of a woman he had never met, he responded she wasn't his grandmother but jokingly asked, "Can I still get a plate tho?"

Dench, doing "what grandmas do," responded: "Of course."

So Hinton went in 2016. Then in 2017, after getting another invite (this time intentionally). Then again in 2018. And now, in 2019, Hinton plans for a fourth year in a row .

"For him to continue with the relationship, I'm just really pleasantly surprised," Dench told the Republic in 2017. "We're more of extended family and, best of all, friends."

In 2018, Hinton tweeted photos from the three previous years of Thanksgivings together.

Hinton told TIME this year that the dinners mostly consist of conversation and catching up on each other's lives.

"We don’t watch TV or anything. We just sit at the table for a couple of hours and talk the whole time and tell stories and see how we’ve been," he told the magazine.

They've kept up their relationship beyond Thanksgiving dinners, too. In October, Hinton shared a photo of him and his girlfriend, Mikaela, with Dench and her husband, Lonnie, at a pumpkin patch.

We went to the pumpkin patch today 🎃 pic.twitter.com/91q9yMJAoa — Jamal Hinton (@kingjamal08) October 26, 2019

Contributing: Kaila White and Jason Pohl, The Arizona Republic