Dick Van Dyke & The Loves Of His Life
The 1980s were a challenging time for Dick Van Dyke and his family. In 1984, he divorced his wife of 36 years, Margie Willett, with whom he had four children: Christian (born in 1950), Barry (1951), Stacy (1955) and Carrie (1961). He began dating Margie — a local girl from Danville, Illinois, who he had known for years — in 1945.
In the summer of 1947, Dick started his partnership with another Danville local, Phil Erickson, and they headed to Los Angeles for their two-man show that satirized the popular singers and songs of the day. It was in L.A. that he met the producer of a radio show called Bride and Groom and mentioned that he wanted to get married but couldn’t afford it. The radio show was the answer (couples received a free honeymoon).
“Borrowing money, I sent Margie a one-way train ticket, and on Feb. 12, 1948, we exchanged ‘I do’s’ in front of a minister and two radio microphones as an estimated 15 million people listened in,” Dick shared in his memoir Dick Van Dyke: My Lucky Life in and out of Show Business. The couple spent most of their early years broke and on the road, before Dick found success. While Margie had no fondness for show business, Dick credits her for doing a “terrific job keeping the kids grounded and on track.”
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In the early 1970s, the couple began to have issues, as Dick met and fell for his agent’s secretary Michelle Triola (pictured above), who was a former singer/dancer best known at the time for her groundbreaking court case unsuccessfully suing her former partner Lee Marvin for alimony, despite being unmarried at the time of their breakup. The two began an affair, which Dick admitted to in 1976.
Dick and Margie continued to live their separate lives, unable to conceive of a divorce. In 1984, however, it was time to move on, and they divorced, and for the next 25 years he remained in a relationship with Michelle, until her death in 2009 (Margie died two years prior). Though the couple never married, Michelle was everything to him. “I was completely unprepared for life without Michelle,” Dick shared in his book.
Who is Dick Van Dyke Married to now?
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He met his last love and current wife, Arlene Silver, at an awards show when she was a makeup artist and he was still involved with Michelle. They were just friends at first. Then Silver, who is 46 years his junior, helped take care of Dick while he was mourning the loss of Michelle. Eventually, he fell in love with her and they married in 2012. They are still married to this day, and he credits his wife as his secret to staying young. (He’s also got a lot of grandchildren and great-grandchildren to help with that!)
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