Dick Van Dyke and Arlene Silver’s love is still going strong after 13 years of marriage — despite criticism about their significant age gap.
“We get along so well,” Van Dyke, 99, told People on Sunday, April 20. “Everybody said it wouldn’t work.”
Silver, 53, who has been married to Van Dyke since 2012, echoed his sentiments, noting that they work well together and “care about each other so much.”
“I mean it’s, like, eerie how well it works,” she gushed to the outlet. “People the same age don’t last.”
Van Dyke met Silver while attending the 13th annual SAG awards in January 2007, where Silver was working the awards show as a makeup artist.
“I never said hello to a strange girl in my life. I was too scared,” the Mary Poppins actor shared with People of their first meeting on Sunday. “But I was at a show backstage and she walked by, and for some reason, I just jumped up and said, ‘Hi, I’m Dick.’ There’s something about her [that] got me, and I was right.”
Despite the duo hitting it off and Van Dyke hiring Silver for other projects he was working on at the time, their connection didn’t turn romantic until years later. The couple tied the knot in February 2012 during a private ceremony in Malibu.
“I married somebody half my age and everybody thought I was crazy, but she is just an absolute angel,” Van Dyke explained to the HuffPost in February 2013. “She sings and dances so there’s a lot of that going around the house. She’s a great cook, and the age difference hasn’t been a problem at all. Emotionally I’m about 13. She’s very, very wise for her age so I’m just having the time of my life.”
Silver has also opened up about how their age difference wasn’t really a big deal to her when they started dating.
“We were friends for so long that when I told people that I know, they were happy about [our relationship, and I was scared,” she told Entertainment Tonight in an interview published in July 2024. “I mean, the facts, our age difference. But it’s so irrelevant. I think when you see us together, it’s like you don’t think about it.”
Van Dyke was previously married to Margie Willet from 1948 to 1984. The twosome share four children together: Christian, 74, Barry, 73, Stacy, 69, and Carrie Beth, 63. Following their divorce, Van Dyke moved on with Michelle Triola Marvin in 1976. The twosome were together until her death in 2009.
