Dick Van Dyke is looking back at the criticism he received over marrying someone half his age.
Thirteen years later, the Mary Poppins actor, now 99, insists the couple is still content with the decision.
“We get along so well,” Van Dyke told People Magazine this Sunday at the couple’s Vandy Camp fundraiser in Malibu, Calif.
“Everybody said it wouldn’t work,” he recalled, to which Silver, now 53, doubled down on his statement.
“We just care about each other so much,” explaining that it’s “eerie how well [the marriage] works.”
Silver then joked that “people the same age don’t last.”
The Dick Van Dyke Show star also recalled meeting his now wife for the first time at the 2006 SAG Awards.
“I never said hello to a strange girl in my life,” he confessed. “I was too scared. 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.”
Following their initial meeting, Van Dyke hired Silver as a makeup artist for subsequent projects, but they didn’t start dating until years later.
The couple also agreed that they empower one another, with Silver sharing that Van Dyke “made me feel like I can do anything.”
The couple married in 2012 when the comedian was 86 and his bride was 40.
Van Dyke was previously married to Margie Willett from 1948 to 1984, during which they welcomed four kids, including Christian, 74, Barry, 73, Stacy, 69, and Carrie Beth, 63.
He also had a long-term relationship with Michelle Triola Marvin, with whom he lived from 1976 until her death in 2009.
