I feel like this is comparing apples and oranges a bit, depending on when you were a kid. Even within the GPU market, Nvidia wasn't a huge player for a while. It's not just that GPUs are more important today, but that Nvidia went from being a small player in the GPU market to essentially being the GPU market. At the same time, Intel's presence in the CPU market has never been lower. Most "computers" are now smartphones running ARM processors, data centers are using AArch64 more and more, there's a slowdown in businesses and consumers buying computers, and AMD is taking a huge share of the X64 market.
Likewise, Nvidia is priced at 102x earnings while Intel is priced at 14x earnings. Some of that might be that people are anticipating the GPU market to be where all the money is in the future, but a decent amount of that is pessimism about Intel's place in the market.
You're not even comparing the CPU market to the GPU market. You're comparing what was possibly the 3rd ranked GPU marker when you were a kid and Intel when you were a kid dominating with 90-95% of CPU sales with Nvidia being 90% of the GPU market's profits today and Intel being more of a bit player in the CPU market.
Some of Nvidia's size today is because they beat all the other graphics card companies (yes, ATI/AMD is still around, but Nvidia's marketshare is above 85%). Some of that comes from GPUs becoming a much bigger factor in many things like AI. But when comparing Intel and Nvidia today, Intel is still getting double the revenue and profits of Nvidia. This is despite the fact that most CPUs have moved away from their architecture, despite the fact that they've had at least half a decade of terrible engineering performance, despite AMD starting to kick their butt and taking serious marketshare on their architecture, etc.
I don't want to say that GPUs aren't important, but Nvidia being worth more than Intel probably says more about Nvidia executing well while Intel stumbles than anything else. If you were asking your father this in 1998, Nvidia was just releasing the RIVA TNT, 3dfx was still king, and Intel was so dominant it looked like they'd be unstoppable forever. Now you're looking at an Intel that doesn't even look like the king of their own architecture, has been having foundry issues for years, and an Nvidia that no other GPU maker has been able to touch. If another GPU maker beats Nvidia and Nvidia becomes smaller than Intel, does that mean that GPUs aren't important any more? No.
The problem isn't your conclusion that GPUs are important today, but the logic getting there. People bragging about things isn't necessarily a great barometer for future success. Lots of things are trendy and lots of companies come and go. Everyone was talking about Pogs and Beanie Babies at one point. That hasn't made them last. People were talking about smartphone/handheld devices since the 80s, but almost all of those companies aren't in that market today (Palm, Handspring, Blackberry, Microsoft). Instead, Apple won that market. Heck, you could have asked your father if 3dfx were bigger than Intel and seen them go bankrupt a few years later. Where's Matrox and S3? This is an anecdote that just feels like survivorship bias. Yep, you asked about the GPU maker that won the market and the CPU maker that would face big declines (and still Intel's revenue/profits are double Nvidia's).