Dick Van Dyke shares his secrets to longevity as he turns 100
Dick Van Dyke shares his secrets to longevity as he turns 100

Happy birthday, Dick Van Dyke! The legendary actor and iconic song and dance man turns 100 on Saturday, and in recent weeks, he’s offered some secrets to his longevity while reflecting on the milestone.

“The funniest thing is, it's not enough. A hundred years is not enough,” Van Dyke said in an interview on ABC’s Good Morning America, which aired Friday. “You want to live more, which I plan to.”

Here’s how he’s done it.

He hits the gym regularly

Van Dyke, who lives in Malibu, Calif., says he goes to the gym three days a week.

“I think that’s saved me from the pain,” he said on GMA. “That's good advice for anybody."

In his new book, 100 Rules for Living to 100, Van Dyke wrote, “If I miss too many gym days, I really can feel it — a stiffness creeping in here and there.”

“I usually do a circuit, going from one machine to the next without a break, in a circle. I start with the sit-up machine,” he wrote. “Then I do all the leg machines religiously because my legs are two of my most cherished possessions. And then the upper body.”

Van Dyke sings in between sets. “The secret ingredient is the music,” he wrote. “Most of my humming and singing really happens when I’m going from one machine to another.”

“By the end, I’m in a sweaty rush, the blood flowing from fingertips to toes, and my spirits are soaring,” he wrote.

He still sings a lot

Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews in "Mary Poppins"
Van Dyke and Julie Andrews in "Mary Poppins," released in 1964. (LMPC via Getty Images)

The Tony, Emmy and Grammy award-winner told NBC’s Today show that he also sings every morning.

“Singing is the best thing you can do for yourself,” Van Dyke said. “Usually I’ll wake up with an old tune going through my head.”

Van Dyke continues to perform with his a capella group, the Vantastix.

And in 2024, just before his 99th birthday, Van Dyke appeared in a Coldplay music video, singing “All My Love” with Chris Martin.

His wife makes him feel like ‘a teenager’

Arlene Silver and Dick Van Dyke appear onstage at the Daytime Emmys Awards in Los Angeles in 2024. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)
Arlene Silver and Dick Van Dyke appear onstage at the Daytime Emmys Awards in Los Angeles in 2024. (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images)

Van Dyke credits his 54-year-old wife, Arlene Silver, whom he met in 2006 and married in 2012, with giving him energy.

“She keeps me young,” he said on Today. “We sing. We dance. She just keeps me a teenager.”

Van Dyke offered more thoughts about her in his book:

Without question, our ongoing romance is the most important reason I have not withered away into a hermetic grouch. Arlene is half my age, and she makes me feel somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters my age, which is still saying a lot. Every day she finds a new way to keep me up and moving, bright and hopeful and needed.

He finds joy in life

Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore in 1962
Van Dyke with Mary Tyler Moore in "The Dick Van Dyke Show," from 1962. (Bettmann Archive via Getty Images)

Van Dyke says he’s always been something of an eternal optimist.

“I’ve always thought that anger is one thing that eats up a person’s insides — and hate,” he told People magazine. “And I never really was able to work up a feeling of hate. I think that is one of the chief things that kept me going.”

In the book, Van Dyke expands on that idea.

“No one is genetically miserable,” he writes. “No matter our current circumstances, we all have the capacity for a joyful life.”

“I’ve made it to 99 in no small part because I have stubbornly refused to give in to the bad stuff in life: failures and defeats, personal losses, loneliness and bitterness, the physical and emotional pains of ageing,” he added. “That stuff is real but I have not let it define me. Instead, for the vast majority of my years, I have been in what I can only describe as a full-on bear hug with the experience of living.”

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