Dick Van Dyke is a national treasure. Van Dyke, who recently turned 99 years old is one of the greatest living talents. And while he may move slower, he’s still incredibly funny and remarkably charming. One assumes that his charms worked quite well on Arlene Silver, Van Dyke’s wife since 2012, but she didn’t fall for him because she was already a fan, because it turns out she wasn’t.
Van Dyke and Silver were guests on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast, hosted by Ted Danson and his wife Mary Steenburgen. Danson asked how the two met and the owner of the worst English accent in the history of Hollywood revealed that he saw her once at the Screen Actors Guild awards and, in a move quite uncharacteristic for him, he jumped up to introduce himself. Van Dyke said…
I was just sitting there by myself and she walked by. For the first time in my life, I just jumped up. I said, ‘Hi, I’m Dick.’ Almost without thinking. And as she sat down I introduced myself. I was totally in love at first sight.
It may have been love at first sight for Dick Van Dyke, but Arlene Silver, a Hollywood make-up artist, didn’t feel the same way it seems. She said she had no idea at the time that Van Dyke was flirting with her, and while this wasn’t a case of not realizing she was talking to a celebrity, she knew who he was, she says she’d never seen anything that he’d been in, including the iconic Mary Poppins.
Van Dyke was apparently shocked she’d never seen his most famous role, where he played jack-of-all-trades Bert opposite Julie Andrews‘ title character. However, he says it may have helped the relationship in the long run because there wasn’t the relationship imbalance that comes when one member of the couple is famous. He continued…
She’d never seen Mary Poppins. In a way, it was kind of good for me because she wasn’t over-impressed or anything. I was just a guy. It was a hard sell.
Not being intimately familiar with the work of Dick Van Dyke is fine, although, Van Dyke has been in Hollywood for so long it’s honestly impressive that she avoided seeing anything he’d been in. He made one of the best sitcoms in the history of television, though it’s certainly easy to miss it today unless you go looking for it. . Having said that, I feel like it’s weird that she had never even seen Mary Poppins. Who hasn’t seen Mary Poppins?
Whether in spite of the fact that Arlene Silver had never seen Dick Van Dyke perform, or perhaps because of it, the two eventually hit it off and they will be celebrating their 13th wedding anniversary in February, or possibly March, as the couple were actually married on Leap Day in 2012.