On Kelly Ripa’s SiriusXM podcast, Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa, on Wednesday, October 9, Winkler, 78, recalled “one of my favorite Hollywood stories”—the story of how he first met Robert De Niro. During the interview, he stated that De Niro, 81, remembered everything they said when they reconnected decades later.

Winker narrated, describing how he and Howard were taking a break from rehearsals for Happy Days, the 1970s ABC comedy in which they both appeared. “Leaning against the doorframe is Robert De Niro; he’s doing a scene from Godfather II.”

“I told Ron, We’ve got to go say hello,” Winkler said. Though Winkler was already a prominent actor in the early 1970s, De Niro’s career was only getting started—Winkler even said that De Niro’s 1973 picture Mean Streets, directed by Martin Scorsese, was the first film he was ever asked to see after starting out in Hollywood

“Okay, so we go up, say hello, finish, and walk away, and then I turn around and say, ‘Mr. De Niro, I just have to tell you, you use the word ‘f—’ better than anybody on the planet,'” recounted the famous actor.

As Winkler noted, when he met De Niro again decades later at a screening for the two-time Oscar winner’s 2015 film The Intern, he remembered their identical conversation from the 1970s.

“We go to the premiere party, [wife Stacey Weitzman] and I, and against the back wall, Robert De Niro is wearing one of those Irish caps.” Winkler recalls. I walk up to him. I turn and stand against the wall. I glanced at him and said, “I have to ask you—as every fan has asked me—to take a selfie with you.” He said, ‘Okay.’ I pull out my camera. I am taking a selfie. He responds, “40 years ago, you claimed I used the term ‘f—’ better than anybody.”

“I dropped the camera,” Winkler said of his response. “I said, ‘He remembers. Oh my God, I exist. This is simply wonderful. That is my wonderful story.