Stiller and Meara were among the earliest graduates of the Second City improvisational comedy troupe to become famous. When variety shows became scarce in the late 1970s, they had a syndicated short program, only five minutes long, which ran on the NBC affiliate in the Washington, D.C. market immediately after Saturday Night Live. They also did comical radio ads. During the mid-1970s Stiller and Meara made a couple of appearances together on the sitcom Rhoda. (Meara was a semi-regular during that show's third season, and Stiller appeared twice, playing her character's ex-husband.)

Anne Meara played Veronica Rooney, a cook on Archie Bunker's Place from 1979–82. She often made wisecracks and gave Archie a hard time. She insisted that Archie also hire her openly gay nephew Fred as a waiter to help him pay for law school. She was an alcoholic and privately pined to reconcile with her ex-husband, Carmine (who appeared in a few episodes, played by Stiller), but knew it wasn't going to happen. Meara appeared sporadically throughout the show's third season and left the show before the fourth and final year.

Stiller and Meara's career declined, however, as variety series gradually disappeared. The duo's own 1986 TV sitcom, The Stiller and Meara Show, in which Stiller played the deputy mayor of New York City and Meara portrayed his wife, a TV commercial Actress, was unsuccessful; Stiller had better luck with his next series, playing George Costanza's father in Seinfeld.

In 1999 and from 2003 to 2007, Stiller and Meara reunited on several episodes of The King of Queens, on which Stiller played the supporting role of Arthur Spooner.

Prior to Meara's death in 2015, the duo were starring in a web series from Red Hour Digital, in which they discussed current topics.