Dick Van Dyke Looks Back on His Iconic Career as He Turns 98: 'My Whole Life Went Before Me' (Exclusive)

Despite decades of award-winning work that has touched generations, the acting legend — who is being honored in an upcoming CBS special — exclusively tells PEOPLE he "never expected that kind of recognition"

When Dick Van Dyke recently entered Television City, a TV studio owned by CBS in Los Angeles, he thought he was simply there for another press interview.

But the acting legend was in for one of the biggest surprises of his life: the taping of Dick Van Dyke 98 Years of Magic, a dazzling, two-hour tribute CBS special featuring archival footage and live performances of songs from Van Dyke’s distinguished, decades-long career.

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, Van Dyke, who turns 98 on Wednesday, admitted that watching the event was surreal.

"You think, 'I don't deserve this,' but it's difficult to say how I felt," he says. "I came home, and I said, 'You know something? It's going to be a couple of days before this actually sinks in that it happened.' I never expected that kind of recognition. My whole life went before me. I didn't realize I had done so many things while I was 75 years in show business.”

Related: Dick Van Dyke Will Celebrate His Birthday with 98 Years of Magic Special on CBS

For the Emmy, Grammy and SAG Award-winning entertainer, watching perfectly recreated song and dance routines of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” from Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’s “Me Ol’ Bamboo” were among the highlights. “I was just blown away,” he says.

Born in West Plains, Missouri on Dec. 13, 1925 and raised in Danville, Illinois, Van Dyke started out in radio and on Broadway before he landed on Carl Reiner's The Dick Van Dyke Show, which ran from 1961 to 1966, and starred Mary Tyler Moore as his wife. The sitcom catapulted both Van Dyke and Moore to stardom and earned them Emmy Awards in the process.

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While shooting The Dick Van Dyke Show, he joined Julie Andrews, Karen Dotrice and Matthew Garber in Walt Disney Pictures' now-classic Mary Poppins. The 1964 film "was special," he told PEOPLE in 2011. "I loved working with kids. You do a lot of clowning and get to know them."

After the movie came a string of film roles including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Dick Tracy,  as well as TV parts. From 1993 to 2001, he played Dr. Mark Sloan, a teaching physician who solved crimes in his spare time, in the CBS crime drama Diagnosis: Murder.

Related: Dick Van Dyke's Life in Photos

In the years that followed, Van Dyke appeared in 2006’s Night in the Museum and 2018’s Mary Poppins Returns — and the actor continues to stay busy. This year alone, he appeared in Days of Our Lives as an amnesiac, The Masked Singer as Gnome and The Simpsons as himself.

While Van Dyke proved a prolific entertainer, he found time for a thriving, personal life, too. He welcomed four children — Christian, Barry, Stacy and Carrie Beth — with late ex-wife Margerie Willett, to whom he was married for 36 years. In 2012, he wed Arlene Silver, a makeup artist, after meeting her at the SAG Awards six years prior.

Related: Dick Van Dyke's 4 Children: Everything to Know

“I just went up and said, ‘Hi, I'm Dick.’ I don't know how I got the courage,” he recalls. “Anyway, we ended up married. She sings like an angel. She dances, and we do a whole act together. We do duets and things. She's the best partner I ever ran into. What a pleasure it is."

Van Dyke plans on spending his actual birthday on Wednesday in low-key fashion, surrounded by several of his grandchildren — “I’m not much on traditions, I don’t think,” he explains — but the entertainer admits he finds joy and gratitude “every day of my life.”

“My wife brings me a cup of coffee in the morning. I get it in bed. I get treated like a king around here,” he says, referring to his Southern California home.

If there’s perhaps one, rare “sad moment” in Van Dyke's at the moment, it’s the quiet challenge many nonagenarians face: the entertainer is outliving many of his friends, including Norman Lear, who recently died at the age of 101 on Dec. 5.

Related: Dick Van Dyke Learns Ukulele in New Video: ‘Never Too Late to Start Something New’

“I had a bunch of friends there to say nice things, but Mary Tyler Moore, Morey [Amsterdam] and Rosie [Rose Marie], Carl Reiner, Norman Lear, all the people that I always loved and associated with are gone, so I'm having to make new friends,” he admits.

Fortunately, the acting legend doesn’t have to go far to do that.

“I'm happy to say people come to me,” he adds. “I don't have to go out looking.”

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Dick Van Dyke 98 Years of Magic premieres Thursday, Dec. 21 at 9 p.m. ET on CBS.

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