Dick Van Dyke and Arlene Silver’s love continues to be 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 one another a lot.”
“I mean it’s, like, eerie how well it really works,” she gushed to the outlet. “People the identical age don’t last.”
Van Dyke met Silver while attending the thirteenth annual SAG awards in January 2007, where Silver was working the awards show as a makeup artist.
“I never said hello to a wierd girl in my life. I used to be too scared,” the Mary Poppins actor shared with People of their first meeting on Sunday. “But I used to be at a show backstage and he or 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 used to be right.”
Despite the duo hitting it off and Van Dyke hiring Silver for other projects he was working on on the time, their connection didn’t turn romantic until years later. The couple tied the knot in February 2012 during a non-public ceremony in Malibu.
“I married someone half my age and everybody thought I used to be crazy, but she is just an absolute angel,” Van Dyke explained to the HuffPost in February 2013. “She sings and dances so there’s lots of that going across the house. She’s an ideal cook, and the age difference hasn’t been an issue in any respect. Emotionally I’m about 13. She’s very, very clever 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 an enormous deal to her once they began dating.
“We were friends for thus long that after I told folks that I do know, they were completely satisfied about [our relationship, and I used to be scared,” she told Entertainment Tonight in an interview published in July 2024. “I mean, the facts, our age difference. But it surely’s so irrelevant. I feel whenever you see us together, it’s such as you don’t give it some thought.”
Van Dyke was previously married to Margie Willet from 1948 to 1984. The twosome share 4 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.
