Arlene Silver admits that when she first met her very famous husband — Dick Van Dyke — she had no idea who he was.
“I had never seen the ‘Dick Van Dyke Show,’ I never saw anything he was in,” Silver, 58, recently told Entertainment Tonight in a joint interview with her husband, 98.
Van Dyke first laid eyes on Silver backstage at the 2006 SAG Awards, where she was working as a makeup artist. The “Mary Poppins” star was so struck by her, he said, he decided to hit on a woman for the first time.
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“I never approached a strange woman in my life,” the Emmy-winner confessed. “And she walked by and I jumped and I said, ‘Hi, I’m Dick.’ I had no idea she was half my age. Beautiful.”
The TV legend said when he found out Silver was a makeup artist, he quickly figured out a way to get to know her better.
“She had one [business] card left, which I took, and hired her,” Van Dyke, who was previously married twice.
The two became fast friends, and with time their relationship blossomed into romance — a turn Silver, Van Dyke and all their friends felt was pretty natural.
“We were friends for so long that when I told people that I know, they were happy about [our relationship], and I was scared,” Silver said. “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 even think about it.”
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Van Dyke then quickly joked: “I was fortunate that I didn’t grow up!”
“We were meant to be,” he added.
Silver moved in with Van Dyke in 2011, and they tied the knot in February 2012.
“I’ve never met anyone like him,” Silver said. “He’s always happy and just positive. Always singing, and I would never sing in public. He got me to sing. He got me to sing up on a stage and sang in front of 1,500 people for the first time. He’s just the most joyful person. He influences everybody else to be more joyful, playful.”
In a 2013 interview with HuffPost, Silver offered a little more context about their first meeting and implied that it felt like it had a dash of kismet.
She told ET that a few days before the 2006 SAG Awards, she was walking down Hollywood Boulevard “going to lunch with some friends, and I remember seeing his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and ‘Mary Poppins’ was playing at the El Capitan on Hollywood Boulevard.”
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“My friends were going crazy saying we should go see ‘Mary Poppins.’ I had never seen it before,” she told HuffPost.
A few days later at the SAG Awards, she recalls finishing up a few models’ makeup for the event, and they suggested she hang out in the green room.
“When I walked in ― I swear, 30 seconds ― I remember seeing Dick at the catering table with his bow tie and his big smile. Right when I sat down, he was sitting next to me,” she said.
Van Dyke told HuffPost around the same time, of the age difference between him and Silver: “Emotionally I’m about 13. She’s very wise for her age so I’m just having the time of my life.”