Dick Van Dyke is a true living legend. He's been entertaining people for three-quarters of a century, and considering the man is 99 years old, we’re all just lucky he’s still living. Based on Van Dyke’s current health and vitality, it seems quite likely that he’ll make it the remaining 11 months between now and turning 100 years old. Which, according to him, isn’t due to anything particularly special, just old-fashioned exercise.
The actor and his wife Arlene Silver recently appeared on the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast hosted by Ted Danson and his wife, Mary Steenburgen. In addition to talking about how Van Dyke and his wife met, they also discuss the actor’s age, which even Van Dyke himself seems shocked to have reached, saying simply…
I'm almost 100. This is insane.
Barring some breakthrough in medicine, most of us probably won’t make it quite as long as Dick Van Dyke has, so it’s not that surprising that even he is having trouble believing he’s made it this far. Still, Van Dyke says that he just thinks the reason he’s made it so long while others haven’t is that he exercises more than others. He explained…
Somebody said, ‘To what do you attribute your age and physical condition?’ I've always exercised three days a week we go to the gym still. And I think that's it, why I'm not stove up like my equals.
However, it has to be said that the owner of the worst English accent in the history of film doesn’t just exercise. Apparently Ted Danson used to frequent the same gym as Van Dyke, and when he saw the Mary Poppins star working out, he didn’t simply lift weights or use the different machines, Danson said…
I would go to the same gym you did, and if I got there early enough, I would see you literally work out on some weight machine. And then, almost like you were doing circuit training, you would not walk to the next machine, you danced. You literally danced to the next machine.
We know that Dick Van Dyke can still dance. His cameo appearance in Mary Poppins Returns back in 2018 when he would have been a youthful 91 years old included a fantastic dance sequence alongside a speech that brought the cast and crew to tears.
Van Dyke now apparently goes to a different gym, a newer place closer to his home, but he’s still there three times a week. While he may have reduced the impact of the kind of workout he does, he’s still doing the work. Van Dyke continued…
Now, I do a lot of stretching and yoga type things, and sit ups. And they have machines, you know, sit up machines, something for almost every exercise.
If exercise really is all he’s been doing to stay in such great shape, it’s something we could all do, and something I should probably start doing.