It's been more than 30 years in the making, but the truth has finally come out: Hey Dude costars Christine Taylor and David Lascher were an item when they filmed the '90s sitcom.
The duo talked about their former relationship on Monday's mini-episode of the Hey Dude... The 90's Called! podcast, finally coming clean after years of denial.
"You were my first real love and it was full of teen angst and all you can imagine," Lascher, 50, said. "We get asked this all the time, and we're like, 'No, nobody dated.'"
Taylor, 51, added: "You were my second boyfriend. I had my high school sweetheart and you were my second boyfriend... We didn't own it at that point. Now I think we just have to own it."
Prior to recording the podcast episode, Taylor said Lascher's wife, Jill London, was the one who encouraged them to talk about their teenage romance.
"We talked about this last night. Jill was like, 'You should talk about this, you should talk about the fact that you dated while you were shooting the show,' which we've never talked about before," Taylor explained.
Lascher then admitted, "I was nervous to even ask you if you wanted to talk about it, but we are both happily married and we are adults." (Lascher has been married to London since 1999, while Taylor married actor Ben Stiller in 2000.)
Looking back on their relationship, Lascher said the two initially bonded over "humor and laughter" while they starred on the Nickelodeon show together.
"We would just make fun of everything and everyone in a lighthearted way. We just laughed for two years straight," he recalled.
Lascher also remembered how the actors were given a per diem and he saved up his money to buy Taylor ruby necklaces in honor of her birthstone. "I was head over heels for you!" he said.
"We were head over heals for each other," Taylor added. "It was total infatuation for sure... he was my first love and I was so infatuated with you, and loved you so much."
Though they had a "great" time together and got "really close", Taylor said they ultimately broke up.
"I think it was the fact that we were working together and living together in this hotel, we were with each other 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and that's not how young love thrives," she said. "You need space to be your own person."
They did, however, attempt to make it work several times. "I remember we kept trying to find our way back to each other," Taylor recalled.
Though a rekindling never happened, the two had to continue working together after the breakup, which Taylor admitted "was not fun." She also said she took full responsibility for the split.
"I was terrible," Taylor recalled. "I was so non-confrontational. I probably had no idea how to talk or deal with it. How great is it we can unpack it now?"
Lascher confirmed there were never any hard feelings, telling his former costar, "Everyone has that first love that crushes them, at some point, even though it wasn't intentional."
While their romantic relationship might have fizzled, Lascher and Taylor agreed that their friendship has since prevailed.
"You and I had a friendship that was above and beyond anything else," he said. "I think the friendship was more important, looking back on it, right? We had such great times together that whatever went on outside of that was less important."
Hey Dude premiered on Nickelodeon in July 1989 and ran until August 1991. The series followed a group of teen workers on a ranch in Tucson, Arizona. In addition to Lascher and Taylor, the show also starred David Brisbin, Kelly Brown, Debra Kalman, Joe Torres, Geoffrey Coy, Jonathan Galkin, and Josh Tygiel.
Hey Dude... The 90's Called! premieres its first full episode on iHeartRadio Jan. 9.
