In 2021, Dick Van Dyke Promised He’d Make It to 100: 12 Things He Says About Staying Active

Dick Van Dyke sat down with ABC’s Chris Connelly at his home in Malibu, with his wife, Arlene Silver, beside him, in an interview that aired the day before his 100th birthday in December 2025.

He talked about the number itself. “The funniest thing is, it’s not enough. A hundred years is not enough. You wanna live more, which I plan to,” he told Good Morning America. “She kept me young,” he said of his wife. “She gives me energy, she gives me humor, and all kinds of support.”

In April 2026, at a community event in Malibu, Van Dyke danced along to a performance from his seat, and musician Herb Alpert, 91, came over to introduce himself. Van Dyke explained his moves with a laugh: “Gotta keep moving!” E! News reported. Keep Moving is also the title of his 2015 autobiography.

A few weeks before turning 100, he told People: “I feel really good for 100. Sometimes I have more energy than others — but I never wake up in a bad mood.”

At 98, Van Dyke told CBS Sunday Morning’s Tracy Smith how he keeps going: “But my wife, God bless her, makes sure that I go to the gym three days a week and do a full workout,” he said. He also repeated an old joke of his: “As I’ve said, if I had known I was gonna live this long, I would’ve taken better care of myself!”

Two years later, at 100, he told ABC he still goes to the gym three days a week, and he called his wife “a health nut.”

In June 2021, the year he was named a Kennedy Center honoree, Van Dyke sat down with CBS’s Anthony Mason in Malibu. He was 95 and already had his next milestone picked out. “I’m looking forward to 100,” he said. “George Burns made it, and I’m gonna do it too.”

The comedian George Burns lived to 100. Van Dyke, born in West Plains, Missouri, in 1925, turned 100 on Dec. 13, 2025, and theaters across the country showed a documentary about his life, Dick Van Dyke: 100th Celebration.

During the same 2021 CBS visit, Van Dyke did sit-ups in his backyard. “I’m 95. And a lot of my friends won’t do these,” he said. “All you old guys out there, listen to me, I’m telling you. You can keep going for — I’m still dancing and singing.”

Then he and Arlene sang for the CBS crew. “Not too bad without our accompaniment,” he told her.

In his 2025 book, 100 Rules for Living to 100, Van Dyke describes his workout as a circuit, “going from one machine to the next without a break, in a circle,” starting with the sit-up machine, AARP reported. “Arlene says I could do 500 [sit-ups], but that might be exaggerating,” he writes. “Then I do all the leg machines religiously, because my legs are two of my most cherished possessions. And then the upper body.”

He admits he can’t fully explain it: “I don’t know why it is something I still want to do, but it is.”

In September 2025, singer Rick Springfield, then 76, was filming a fitness segment at a gym in Malibu and spotted Van Dyke, 99, “working out on every machine.” Springfield wrote on Instagram: “Dick has lived in Malibu for about 30 years and is an awesome human being. I thought I was doing well at 76, but Dick got up from the chest press machine and did a little dance step before I left! Amazing!”

For Mary Poppins Returns (2018), Van Dyke went back to Cherry Tree Lane 54 years after playing Bert in Mary Poppins, and the then-91-year-old did all his own dancing.

“He gave me three versions, and I took the hardest one. I said, ‘I want that one,’” he told CBS. “I had to prove I could do it.”

Before his 100th birthday, Van Dyke was asked about his long life, and he pointed to his temper, or the lack of one. “I’ve always thought that anger and hate is one thing that eats up a person’s insides,” he told People, as The Independent reported.

“And I never really was able to work up a feeling of hate. There were things I didn’t like, people I don’t like and disapprove of. But I never really was able to do a white heat kind of hate.”

At 98, Van Dyke still did the New York Times crossword in pen. When CBS’s Tracy Smith asked what that says about him, he laughed: “That I’m very confident!”

For his 100th birthday, Arlene told People what he wanted to do: “He wants to be in his room watching Jeopardy! reruns with me,” AARP reported.

“You know I played old men a lot. And I always played ’em as angry, and cantankerous,” Van Dyke told GMA in December 2025. Then he laughed: “It’s not really that way.” He added: “I don’t know any other 100-year-old, but I can speak for myself.”

In June 2024, at 98, he became the oldest winner of a Daytime Emmy, for a guest role on Days of Our Lives.

At 98, Van Dyke was still singing with his vocal group, the Vantastix. Asked by CBS how much it matters that he’s having fun, he said: “My whole career has depended on that. If I’m not enjoying myself, I’m really bad, I am. It’s such a blessing to find a way of making a living that you love, that you’d do for nothing. I feel so sorry for people who hate their job. I look forward to going to work every morning!”