38-year-old Tyler Butterworth has known his neighbor, 77-year-old Rudy Neish, for about a decade. Their friendship began with occasional help with farmwork in their rural Virginia town, but recently they've bonded over something new: cooking.
Neish's wife was previously the cook in the family, but now Rudy has become her primary caretaker due to her declining health and dementia. When he expressed his regret over not knowing how to cook to his neighbor, Butterworth had a great idea.
Neish told Today,
We ran into each other at the little shopping center and I was telling Tyler that I'm just tired of popping this processed food in the microwave for my wife. I wish I knew how to cook better, give her better meals. That's how the conversation went, and it was just as simple as Tyler says, ‘Well, I love to cook, won't you let me teach you to cook and we'll film it.'
And that's just what they did, with their cooking videos garnering hundreds of thousands of views each. Each video shows a simple step-by-step recipe that Rudy has added to his repertoire, from chili to peri peri chicken.
The military police officer turned farmer, Tyler Butterworth, already had a large social media following, with over 2 million followers on Instagram alone, but now Rudy has quite the fan club as well, with Neish telling Today,
One thing that amazes me is the amount of people that are on a phone and watch this stuff. On one video, people were asking me my opinion on things, and I'm going, ‘I don't know about that.'
But now he does know quite a bit about cooking, and he's experienced firsthand the benefits of delicious home-cooked meals, saying,
As I learned to cook better meals, more nutritious ones, my wife is doing better as a result.
Butterworth said of his neighbor,
Rudy and I are going to continue to be friends and continue to help each other.
Oh, if we could all have neighbors like Tyler and Rudy!
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