If Ryan and Dan Kowarsky needed proof that they have grown up as performing artists, it couldn’t have come from a more unlikely place. Not too many years ago, the identical-twin brothers were being mobbed by teenage girls. Now, a month shy of their 28th birthday, they can lay claim to one of the oldest fans on the globe. We got this package from a 93-year-old lady, says Ryan during an interview yesterday. Inside was this set of false teeth, continues Dan.

Ryan picks up the thread: There was this note inside that said `I love your music so much that you have to have my teeth.’ Adds Dan: There was a picture in the package, too, showing this old lady smiling with no top teeth. The boys make faces at the memory. The looks are similar to their mock-horror when reminded of their days as two of the three members of boy-band b4-4. It exploded onto the pop charts in the summer of 1999 and died of boy-band fatigue in 2004.

Back then, Ryan and Dan (with fellow vocalist Ohad Einbinder) sported spiky blond hair. Ryan blushes. You know, I look at the pictures from that time and think, oh man. He shakes his head. They’ve done a lot of growing up. After their boy-band days, Ryan and Dan returned home to Toronto, where their lawyer father had retired as the head cantor at Beth Tzedek synagogue and been appointed a justice of the peace. Our mother had just been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, relates Ryan.

We decided that we had to give her something special, continues Dan. So we decided to record a song. They chose The Prayer, a David Foster song that’s one of the 13 tracks on RyanDan , their debut album. The adult-contemporary pop compilation hits stores today. That song changed everything for us, says Dan. After we recorded it, we knew what we wanted to do with our life. They went to England to work with producer Steve Anderson.