Dick Van Dyke has spent a lifetime making people laugh on command. But his younger brother Jerry, who died in 2018 at 86, was something different entirely — funny the way some people are tall. It wasn't a skill Jerry switched on. It was just who he was.
"I could do comedy," Dick explained during a recent gathering at his Malibu home, according to People. "You hand me a comedy, and I could do it. Jerry was funny inside. He couldn't help it. I could do comedy. He was comedy."
Jerry Van Dyke had a long career in entertainment, best known for playing Luther Van Dam, the lovable assistant coach on the 1990s sitcom Coach. But what Dick remembers most vividly isn't the professional achievements — it's the moments when Jerry's humor caught him completely off guard.
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Start Your News DetoxDick recalled a family story from their childhood that still makes him laugh thinking about it. The two brothers were somewhere they had to keep their faces completely still, expressions frozen. Jerry said something funny, and Dick felt the laugh building, but he couldn't let it show. "We started laughing," Dick said. "It was the worst. God, we had tears running down our cheeks. I'll never forget it. It's the hardest I ever laughed in my life."
The work they shared
The brothers collaborated on several projects over the decades, including The Dick Van Dyke Show and Temperatures Rising. Their final appearance together came in 2015, when they played siblings on an episode of The Middle. By then, they'd learned something about getting older in the entertainment industry — and about each other.
"We are becoming closer," Jerry told the Los Angeles Times at the time. "I'm really getting to know him better at this age." Dick added that working together more frequently had deepened their connection. Jerry, with characteristic timing, delivered the punchline: "The nicer he is to me, the more I think he thinks I'm going to die."
Seven years after Jerry's death from congestive heart failure, Dick still misses the brother who made him laugh harder than anyone else ever could. Not because Jerry was trying to be funny, but because he simply was.
