Silke Jasso
Dick Van Dyke appeared on the season 9 premiere of The Masked Singer proving even though he’s 97, he isn’t slowing down anytime soon. The Mary Poppins star, who married 51-year-old Arlene Silver in 2012, said several things help him stay young at heart.
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“Genes, I guess, for one thing,” Van Dyke told Yahoo! Entertainment. “Having a beautiful young wife half my age to take care of me — that works! My positive attitude, I get that from my wife.”
The four-time Emmy winner also revealed how he stays active. “I wrote a book called Keep Moving: I still go to the gym three days a week and work out,” he continued. “And I advise everybody to do that, because that’s what ages people — it’s just a stiffening up and not exercising their muscles and their lungs. Exercise is the answer.”
Gnome Performs “When You’re Smiling” by Frank Sinatra
Van Dyke stated that he and Silver love singing around the house. “Every day my beautiful wife sings,” he stated. “There’s a lot of duets going on around the house most of the day.”Silver went on to add that she taught herself some of Van Dyke’s favorite songs over the Covid pandemic shutdown.
“I learned all the music he knows so I can keep him singing,” she went on to tell PEOPLE. “Every show tune, every standard. I know all of them now, and I didn’t know any of them before.”
The couple usually hosts karaoke parties at their house and even celebrated Valentine’s Day with friends at a gathering last week.”We have a karaoke party, and all the gang that we know who like to sing come over,” Van Dyke stated. “And we all get in the living room and sing all evening. It’s a tradition.” She described it as “group singing where you have the karaoke track on the TV.”
“Everyone has a mic with a speaker on it and so it’s more of a full sound than if you’re just karaoke with one person sings,” she stated. “And then more people sing that normally wouldn’t because they don’t have to get up and sing.”
Silver is also credited in helping Van Dyke select the song he performed as Gnome on The Masked Singer, which was Frank Sinatra’s “When You’re Smiling.” “They wanted me to do something current and I know nothing from rock,” Van Dyke stated. “So we picked out one which typifies me. She’s the one that came up with it and I liked the song, too.”
