{"id":286065,"date":"2025-11-15T11:33:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T11:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/286065\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T11:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T11:33:10","slug":"star-99-reveals-every-one-of-my-lifelong-friends-is-gone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/286065\/","title":{"rendered":"Star, 99, Reveals &#8216;Every One of My Lifelong Friends is Gone&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t<img decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\" width=\"948\" height=\"533\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/dick-van-dyke-1014x570.jpg\"   alt=\"DIAGNOSIS MURDER, Dick Van Dyke, 1993-2001\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Viacom\/Everett Collection<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\tWhat To Know<\/p>\n<p>Dick Van Dyke, approaching his 100th birthday, remains in surprisingly good health and continues to stay active, despite occasional minor illnesses.<br \/>\nHe revealed in a recent essay that he feels deep loneliness after outliving all of his lifelong friends, describing the experience as extremely painful.<br \/>\nVan Dyke credits his much younger wife, Arlene Silver, with supporting his well-being, but admits that aging has limited his social life and ability to travel.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvinsider.com\/people\/dick-van-dyke\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dick Van Dyke<\/a> \u2014 whose eight decade career has included everything from classic sitcom <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvinsider.com\/show\/the-dick-van-dyke-show\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Dick Van Dyke Show<\/a> and iconic 1964 musical <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvinsider.com\/show\/mary-poppins\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mary Poppins<\/a>, to \u201990s crime drama <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvinsider.com\/show\/diagnosis-murder\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Diagnosis Murder <\/a>and a 2024 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvinsider.com\/people\/coldplay\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Coldplay<\/a> video \u2014 has shocked the world by reaching the age of 99 in seemingly good health and high spirits. But, as he revealed in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thetimes.com\/life-style\/health-fitness\/article\/dick-van-dyke-at-100-my-secrets-for-a-long-and-healthy-life-kcr7j5s05\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">November 13, 2025 article he penned for The Times (UK) about his secrets of aging<\/a>, it\u2019s not all enjoyable \u2014 in fact, all of the famous funnyman\u2019s closest friends passed away before him, a situation that he finds extremely painful. \u201cEvery single one of my dearest lifelong friends is gone, which feels just as lonely as it sounds,\u201d Van Dyke wrote.<\/p>\n<p>How is Dick Van Dyke\u2019s health?<\/p>\n<p>Though he will turn 100 on December 13, 2025, Van Dyke has been surprisingly free of health issues. Despite an earlier struggle with alcohol that led him to quit drinking in 1972, as well as decades as a heavy smoker (he had admitted he chews nicotine gum to this day), Van Dyke has not been know to have suffered from any major illnesses or adverse health events. In late June 2025, Van Dyke cancelled a planned appearance at a fan event, Vandy Camp; his wife, <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2024\/06\/27\/entertainment\/dick-van-dyke-talks-alcoholism-battle-i-have-to-be-careful\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Arlene Silver, announced that<\/a> \u201cWhen you\u2019re 99-and-a-half years old, you have good days and bad days, and when you\u2019re 40 years old, you have good days and bad days. Unfortunately, today is not a good day for him, and he\u2019s sick that he can\u2019t be here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Though this led some to speculate that Van Dyke was seriously ill, no further reports of illness were made, and Van Dyke reported, in his Times (UK) essay, that he still goes to the gym three times a week.<\/p>\n<p>However, though he is physically quite well for a 99-year-old, Van Dyke wrote that \u201cit\u2019s frustrating to feel diminished in the world, physically and socially. I get invites to events or offers for gigs in New York or Chicago, but that kind of travel takes so much out of me that I have to say no. Almost all of my visiting with folks has to happen at my house.\u201d He also noted that \u201cthough I still do guest spots on TV, and ads and videos, I miss going to the studio every day for a regular series.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Is Dick Van Dyke lonely?<\/p>\n<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1052\" height=\"720\" class=\"size-large wp-image-35089\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/TSDDIVA_EC043-scaled-e1757357507172-1052x720.jpg\" alt=\"THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW, from left: Dick Van Dyke, &lt;a href=\"  \/><\/p>\n<p>Though he credits his good health and outlook to his marriage to Silver, whom he wed in 2012 and who is 46 years younger than him (\u201cArlene is half my age, and she makes me feel somewhere between two thirds and three quarters my age, which is still saying a lot,\u201d he wrote), Van Dyke still admitted that his longevity was actually difficult, because he had outlived his friends and peers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEvery single one of my dearest lifelong friends is gone, which feels just as lonely as it sounds,\u201d Van Dyke revealed. Though he does not specifically name which friends he is referring to, he might be including friend and collaborator Mary Tyler Moore, who died in 2017 at the age of 80, and Dick Van Dyke Show creator <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tvinsider.com\/people\/carl-reiner\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Carl Reiner<\/a>, who died at the age of 98 in 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Viacom\/Everett Collection What To Know Dick Van Dyke, approaching his 100th birthday, remains in surprisingly good health and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":286066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":{"0":"post-286065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=286065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/286066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}