Former Nickelodeon Teen Stars Reveal They Secretly Dated During Show's Run

Over three decades after Hey Dude ended on Nickelodeon, stars Christine Taylor and David Lascher still have some secrets to spill. During the first episode of their podcast about the teen sitcom, Taylor and Lascher confirmed that they dated while the show was filmed. Hey Dude aired on Nickelodeon between July 1989 and August 1991.

"You were my first real love and it was full of teen angst and all you can imagine," Lascher, 50, told Taylor, 51, in the first Hey Dude... The '90s Called! podcast episode, reports PEOPLE. "We get asked this all the time, and we're like, 'No, nobody dated.'" Taylor added that they just have to "own it" that they dated. She said that Lascher was her second boyfriend.

Before they recorded the episode, Lascher's wife, Jill London, encouraged Taylor and Lascher to talk about their teenage romance publicly for the first time. "We talked about this last night," Taylor recalled. "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."

Lascher said he was "nervous to even ask" Taylor if he wanted to talk about dating since they are happily married to other people. Landon and Lascher married in 1999 and have three children. Taylor and Ben Stiller have been married since 2000 and have two children.

As for the relationship itself, Lascher said they bonded over "humor and laughter" while making Hey Dude. They "laughed for two years straight" during filming in Tucson, Arizona. They also joked about falling "head over heels" for each other. "It was total infatuation for sure," Taylor said. "He was my first love and I was so infatuated with you, and loved you so much."

The relationship ended partly because they were spending so much time together. "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," Taylor explained. "You need space to be your own person."

They tried to reconcile, but it never came together. Taylor took responsibility for the split, noting that she was "so non-confrontational" at the time. Today, there are no hard feelings between them. "Everyone has that first love that crushes them, at some point, even though it wasn't intentional," Lascher said.

Hey Dude was created by Dee LaDuke and ran 65 episodes over five seasons. The show tracked a group of teens working at the fictional Bar None Dude Ranch in Tucson, run by a divorced father from New Jersey (David Brisbin). The entire series is available on DVD and almost every episode can be streamed on Paramount+.