Dick Van Dyke Mourns The Death Of His Brother Jerry Van Dyke: Inside The Famous Brothers’ Colliding Careers

Dick Van Dyke is privately mourning the loss of his younger brother, Jerry Van Dyke. Just one week after the death of his Dick Van Dyke Show co-star Rose Marie, Dick Van Dyke has lost his brother Jerry. Jerry Van Dyke passed away on Friday at his Arkansas ranch at age 86, according to CNN.

Jerry Van Dyke was best known for his Emmy nominated role as assistant coach Luther Horatio Van on the long-running sitcom Coach, but his career path collided with his famous brother’s career from the beginning. One of Jerry Van Dyke’s first TV acting credits came in 1962 on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Jerry played Stacey Petrie, the banjo-playing, sleepwalking brother of Dick’s character, Rob Petrie, on the CBS sitcom. Dick later revealed that the sleepwalking sibling storyline was based on his brother Jerry’s real-life habit.

“It was based on truth,” Dick Van Dyke told the Los Angeles Times.

“He was a sleepwalker as a kid. I told Carl Reiner about it, and that’s why he wrote it into the script.”

Jerry Van Dyke would guest star as Stacey four times on The Dick Van Dyke Show and he later reprised the role in the 2004 TV movie The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited. Jerry also appeared on The New Dick Van Dyke Show in 1973.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ1Yo21Ev6E

In 1999, Jerry Van Dyke reluctantly guest-starred on an episode of Dick’s long-running drama series, Diagnosis: Murder.

“It took an awful long time to do that show,” Jerry admitted in an interview with PopDose. “I finally caved in, but I’m not a fan of the show. I’m a fan of my brother, but the show…it’s not necessarily a comedy, y’know?”

'Dick Van Dyke Show' star Jerry Van Dyke dead at 86 https://t.co/uoI9gYYjSV pic.twitter.com/cJdCDORy6t

— Page Six (@PageSix) January 6, 2018

Three decades after Jerry Van Dyke made his first appearance on The Dick Van Dyke Show, his famous older brother made a surprise cameo on an episode of Coach in 1993.

“I’m getting sick of Dick riding on my coattails,” Jerry Van Dyke joked to the Toronto Star of his brother’s walk-on part in 1994. “I just can’t prop up his career forever.”

More recently, Dick and Jerry Van Dyke worked together in a 2011 benefit production of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys. And in 2015, Jerry and Dick appeared together on the ABC sitcom The Middle, playing a pair of feuding brothers, Tag and Dutch. In the episode, the famous brothers duet the song “Two of a Kind.”

Due to their six-year age difference, Dick Van Dyke and his little brother Jerry weren’t that close growing up in Danville, Ill. As a teen, Dick graduated from high school before Jerry even started. But the brothers had comedy in common. Jerry Van Dyke always looked up to his talented big brother, and Dick later revealed that he was blown away by Jerry’s comedic talent the first time he saw him in a talent show.

“I didn’t realize how good he was,” Dick told the Los Angles Times.

“The main thing about Jerry is that he’s funny from the inside out.”

The star siblings became notoriously close as adults. In a 1982 interview with CNN, Jerry Van Dyke said that when they were growing up, he and his brother were known as the funny kids in the neighborhood and that they got their humor from their father. Jerry also revealed that his brother Dick was his best friend.

“As we’ve gotten older we’ve become very close,” Jerry said at the time. “He’s my best friend now.”