TikTok stars Dick and Duane on surviving the AIDS crisis, opening their relationship and finding fame in their 60s (EXCLUSIVE)

Comedy duo Dick and Duane have been together for more than 44 years – long enough to witness the AIDS crisis firsthand, fight for LGBTQ+ rights, navigate changing attitudes towards relationships and unexpectedly become social media stars.

Having documented much of their life together through photographs and home videos, the couple have built a devoted online following by recreating decades-old snapshots of their relationship and sharing candid reflections on queer history, ageing and love.

In conversation with Attitude, the pair reflect on New York’s legendary gay nightlife, misconceptions about gay life in the 1980s, opening their relationship after decades together, and much more.

What do you tell young LGBTQ+ people who want the kind of relationship you’ve built together?

Dick: We get asked that all the time. A lot of the advice people give is kind of trite – “don’t go to sleep mad” and all those things. We hate those.

You’ve got to be friends. You’re not just in love with each other and you’re not just attracted to each other. You’ve got to be friends.

What we find now is that people are always talking about red flags. “Dump him. Leave him if he does this. Watch out if he does that.” These relationship experts are always talking about red flags. What they don’t do is talk about the green flags.

We’ve never really thought about things that way. Any faults that we had, or anything that bothered us, we just dealt with it. You put up with things.

Duane: Here’s the thing. If you see a little red flag and immediately say, “OK, I’m out of here”, you’re not giving the relationship any time. You’ve got to give it time and you’ve got to be willing to put up with something that can possibly change.

As long as it’s not abusive, you’ve got to be willing to have a relationship, not look for every excuse to get out of it.

Dick: Again, you’ve got to be willing to have a relationship, not look for every excuse out of it.

How has your dynamic changed from the early days to now?

Dick: We’re not an old married couple. We’ve been together a long time, but we’re not an old married couple.

We still have fun in the dumbest, silliest things, and we’ve always done that. From the start we were always like kids. It’s grown-ups acting like children, pretty much. We’re always making up stupid songs or doing anything to make each other laugh.

We did a video that became very popular where we were doing all these mundane things like an old married couple and people really related to it. But we’re not really like that because we’re always acting like kids.

Duane: Our voices were higher.

Dick: That’s true.

Duane: When I look at the old videos of us, I’m like, “Oh my God, we’re absolutely the same.” We just posted a clip from around 1984 and there are outtakes where we’re going at each other exactly the same way we do today.

What’s interesting is we’ve never had a fight that lasted very long. Five minutes, maybe. The anger is gone immediately. We’ve never taken it into the next day or sat around stewing about something.

We get it out, we say what we need to say and then we move on. We don’t hold grudges or contempt.

Whose idea was it to start documenting your lives together?

Dick: Mine. I grew up with a mother who filmed everything and photographed everything. I found it annoying as a kid, but I’m glad she did it. My parents had photo albums just of themselves before I was born.

When we met, I wanted to record everything. One of the first things we did was take a photo booth picture in Grand Central Station. That was maybe our third date.

Later I took a video class at Rutgers in the early ’80s. Back then it wasn’t common to have a video camera. The camera was the size of a television. You had the camera, the battery pack and the recorder. It was a lot of equipment.

I wasn’t thinking about the future. I wasn’t thinking, “One day we’ll need to look at this.” I just wanted to record everything.

Do you think about the future when you’re making videos now?

Dick: No.

Duane: No. It’s all for now.

Dick: It’s all in the moment.

Tell me about your social media journey. Was there one post that changed everything?

Dick: It was gradual. We’d been on Facebook years ago and we’d created these characters, which were basically exaggerated versions of ourselves. We’d post stories and photos and things like that.

When we started doing TikTok, we decided to go in a totally different direction. At first it was a huge flop. We wore children’s Halloween masks from the 1960s.

I was Sally Field as The Flying Nun.

Duane: And I was Jacqueline Kennedy.

Dick: So they were friendly characters, but also quite scary. We did that for a while and then realised maybe this wasn’t a very good idea. We took the masks off and started being ourselves.

That’s when things started to grow.

Duane: The thing that really made us blow up was recreating the photos.

Dick: It wasn’t even really our idea. It was a trend at the time and we don’t usually like doing trends, but we had all these photos and it seemed like the perfect thing for us to do. Once we started recreating them, that really took off.

Are there any recreations still on your bucket list?

Dick: There’s one from San Francisco in 1982 that I really want to do. I think it was the first trip we took together.

A lot of our photographs were inspired by Cindy Sherman. She did these images that looked like film stills even though they weren’t.

In this photo we’re in the Castro pretending to be hustlers. We’re leaning against a street sign looking alluring and sexy, but we’re also very clean-cut and wearing loafers and Oxford shirts. We definitely weren’t dressed for the role. It’s this weird contradiction.

That’s one I really want to recreate. Ideally we’d go back to the exact location.

What was it like living through the AIDS crisis together?

Dick: It was a bizarre time because it was terrifying. We were seeing people get sick and die all around us. It made us angry and we became activists. We joined ACT UP.

But at the same time we were having a lot of fun. New York had incredible nightlife. It was one of the greatest periods and one of the worst periods at exactly the same time.

When you’re living through something like that, you don’t necessarily realise it. It’s only afterwards that you look back and think, “That was really horrible. That was really interesting. That was really important.”

One thing we find now is that people rewrite history. They seem to think we were living under a cloud all the time, that everything was depressing and that it was a horrible time to be alive.

It was a horrible time to be alive and it was a lot of fun. Both things were true.

What do younger people misunderstand about gay life back then?

Dick: A lot of younger people assume we were all in the closet and afraid to be visible, but that wasn’t true at all.

It was actually a very liberating time.

Duane: It was exciting because you were young and suddenly you were in this adult world – this gay male adult world.

There were clubs like The Mineshaft and The Anvil. There were all these sex clubs and we desperately wanted to experience them, but we were scared.

We loved going dancing. We’d go to The Saint, Tunnel, Area and Palladium. New York had the greatest nightlife.

Every bar had a dark room. We’d sometimes go in holding hands, completely terrified but also excited. We thought if we stayed too long we might lose ourselves and do something we’d regret.

What I remember most is how friendly everyone was. You could strike up a conversation with anybody.

Dick: People weren’t staring at themselves in mirrors making sure every hair was in place. Everybody was there to have fun.

It didn’t feel as narcissistic as it does today.

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Check out Dick and Duane’s socials here.