Henry Winkler Talks Ron Howard, 'Arrested Development' & 'Happy Days'

Henry Winkler's affection for Arrested Development runs deep, but the most moving part of his conversation with Rich was about the man he met on the Happy Days set more than 50 years ago: Ron Howard.

It started with Rich's 12-year-old daughter Taylor, who has watched every episode of Arrested Development and once spotted Winkler at a memorial, announcing to her dad, "That's Barry Zuckerkorn." Winkler, delighted, wished Taylor a great summer. He explained what he loved about the show: a great cast, a part that was supposed to last two episodes and stretched to five years, and writing so sharp that creator Mitch Hurwitz would come sprinting onto the sound stage from his office feed with a line funnier than anything Winkler was about to improvise. He doesn't have a favorite scene, comparing it to a favorite child he has to live with, and described his job simply as creating life to hold a mirror up to society.

Then Rich raised the bigger picture, that Ron Howard and Henry Winkler sharing a cast made Happy Days one of the most iconic shows ever, with Howard later narrating Arrested Development while Winkler acted in it. Winkler called Howard still his relative, and told the story of two unlikely souls touched by the universe. Howard came from a family that left an Oklahoma farm for Broadway, while Winkler was the son of parents who escaped the Holocaust in Germany. They met when Winkler was 27 and Howard 18, and there was a string between them, an ability to share a space without ever telling each other what they were about to do.

That bond carried into life. Winkler became godfather to Bryce Dallas Howard and was asked to take in the Howard children if anything ever happened to their parents. He saved one piece of memorabilia, a plywood shelf outside Arnold's where he once wrote that they were starting the sixth year and that Ron had just had a red-headed daughter, only for Winkler to have one himself a few months later. As for the money in the banana stand, he confirmed with a smile, it's always there.