The two first met in 2016 when Dench, from Mesa, Az., sent a text message inviting Hinton to dinner. It’s for her grandson who changed his phone number. Instead, Hinton received the text while sitting in class at Desert Vista High School.
The two found the mistake, then sent selfies to each other, and Hinton asked if he could come here. Dench texted, “Of course you can. That’s what grandmas do… feed everyone.”
Hinton took to Twitter to tell followers that the two are still celebrating a day together.
“We’re all gearing up for Year 6!” he wrote, along with a picture of a text message from Dench inviting him, his girlfriend Mikaela and his family. He also included a photo of himself, Dench, Mikaela and Dench’s late husband Lonnie, who died in April 2020 after a battle with Covid-19.
Hinton has documented the annual holiday on her social media. In 2019, he shared a snap, writing, “So lucky to have such wonderful people in our lives.”
After Dench’s husband passed away, they still spent vacations together,
“This Thanksgiving, along with all the holidays to come, won’t be like the holidays before but we’ll make the best of it,” Hinton wrote in a post last year. “Rest in peace to Lonnie and all the others we lost this year, we will miss you so much. Thank you for being in our lives.”
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