(CNN) Bert and Ernie are still just roommates.

In a statement, Sesame Workshop was prompted to address the famous puppets' relationship after a former writer for "Sesame Street" said his own relationship with another man inspired his writing of the characters.

"I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert and Ernie, they were [gay]," Mark Saltzman, who worked for the preschooler program for 15 years, told Queerty in an interview. "I didn't have any other way to contextualize them."

Saltzman added that he was already with his now-late partner of 20 years, Arnie, at the time he started with the show in 1984, "so I don't think I'd know how else to write them, but as a loving couple."

"I wrote sketches...Arnie's OCD would create friction with how chaotic I was. And that's the Bert and Ernie dynamic," he said.

Read More