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. “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.
” Van Dyke then quickly joked: “I was fortunate that I didn’t grow up!” “We were meant to be,�.
