For more than 22 years, Kelly Ripa has had a few “TV husbands” — but today, her real-life husband, Mark Consuelos, becomes her official co-host on “Live.”
Ripa and Consuelos have been married for nearly 27 years, and have worked together for their entire relationship. But they never planned for it to be that way.
The couple first met in the ’90s on the soap opera “All My Children.” From the day Ripa became co-host of “Live With Regis and Kelly” in 2001, Consuelos would appear on the talk show, whether it be as a guest co-host or for a Valentine’s Day special, and America has watched their three now-adult children grow up on television. They have acted together on each other’s shows, playing lovers on the sitcom “Hope & Faith” and the CW’s “Riverdale.” And they run their own production company together, Milojo, which takes after the first two letters of their children’s names: Michael, Lola and Joaquin.
But now, they will sit next to each other every single morning, as talk show hosts on the No. 1 rated entertainment morning show in daytime syndication.
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“The concept of the show was always a faux husband and wife, right? I have described it where it’s these two people, they’ve woken up and now they’re having coffee, and then their friends are coming over who happen to be celebrities, and we’re all having a good time,” says the show’s longtime executive producer, Michael Gelman. “Now, it’s just graduated to a new level of reality, which is a real husband and wife.”
Ripa and Consuelos say it was the network’s idea to cast them together. In fact, they initially thought it was a terrible idea.
“We’d be the last people on earth to suggest ourselves to work together for anything,” Ripa says. “They were putting the data in front of us, like, ‘Do you realize how much you’ve worked together in your careers?’ And it actually really started to make sense to us.”
Ripa says that when transition conversations began to happen with Ryan Seacrest’s departure, no other names came into the conversation aside from her husband. “They seemed pretty set on Mark,” Ripa says.
Gelman says Consuelos was “the perfect choice” because he has been part of the show with Ripa from the beginning.
“When we were booking Kelly, we were booking Mark. He’s been here. He’s done it dozens and dozens of times,” the executive producer says. “People have always been fascinated when he comes on because you’re not just hearing two friends. Now you’re hearing things that are going on in real relationships, like, ‘You were snoring last night.’ People like that, so it wasn’t a hard decision.”
Ripa says, “I keep saying to myself that it’s one of the great, weirdest social experiments that the audience can experience with us.”
“There are a lot of married people that watch our show,” Ripa continues. “From our past, when Mark would fill in for Ryan, it is the mundane marital stuff that resonates with our viewers the most. The most feedback we got would be when Mark and I bicker about something very routine. The response is phenomenal. You realize, ‘Oh, it’s not just us.’ I’m not the only woman whose husband commandeers the remote control, puts on a World War II documentary, falls asleep clutching the remote control, and every time I try to fish it silently out of his hand, he wakes up and says, ‘I’m watching!’ Yep, it’s not just me. It’s all of us.”
Consuelos says he’s not nervous to work with his wife every day. If anything, his only nerves come from wanting to keep the show on top. “I think I just need to separate myself from the husband role, and just focus on being someone who’s been hired to take that coveted spot,” Consuelos says. “The show is the No. 1 talk show in daytime. It’s like coming on to a championship team – and being a pivotal part of a team, you just don’t want to screw up. I want to keep them on a winning streak.”
Being an actor, Consuelos is used to having multiple takes to get the shot. He admits that every time he guest hosts on “Live,” he forgets that the show is actually live. Lucky for him, his wife is a pro.
“She reassures me just be in the moment. Just have fun,” Consuelous says. “It’s going to be great — that’s kind of the mantra that we both have when we do the show together.”
Ripa has sat next to a slew of guest hosts on the on-air audition circuit over the years. But with Consuelos, there is no training necessary because he’s already guest-hosted the show around 100 times.
“Michael Gelman, our executive producer, says it’s so great to have a host that we don’t have to train,” Ripa says. “He already understands what this is. He gets it. With me [when I started], it was all training. I got this job, and I had no idea what I was doing. It took me a long time to get my sea legs or ‘talk-show legs.’ With Mark, there’s none of that.”
Ripa admits that for the past few years, she has considered retiring from “Live,” but her husband’s casting now extends her timeline on the show. “It’s definitely breathed new life into me,” she says. “This is a bird of a feather I understand completely. There is no anxiety about it.”
The couple isn’t sure if anything will be off limits for their morning coffee chat. “I think we’ll find out what’s off limits, probably in real time, which can be very compelling or disastrous,” Ripa says with a laugh.
“Every time I’ve done it, it’s been one of the fastest hours of work in my life,” Consuelos says. “I adore the first 20 minutes when we can just go off on tangents lots of times. The producers will give us a few talking points, as far as something in the news or this would be interesting to talk about or these little news items — but I can’t tell you how many times we’ve gone there and we just go off the rails. We just like to talk about anything that comes to mind, and then it’s 20 minutes later, and we haven’t gotten to any of the news items. It’s been a blast. So, I look forward to the spontaneity of the show.”
Consuelos recently joked with Variety‘s Marc Malkin that discussing their sex life is off-limits, and reserved for the less-restricted morning TV format of Ripa’s podcast. But, the couple does recognize that the format of “Live” is to bring their personal life into the daily conversation.
“You might not even know we’re married if you saw us interact on set,” Ripa says. “How we operate as a married couple is so different than how we operate as two people working together. There is a separation of church and state — except ‘Live’ is a little bit different. ‘Live’ is where it blends your family and the professional side.”
So, what do their kids think about mom and dad working together?
“They were they were excited. They were happy. They were sad. They were like, ‘Are we going to see Ryan anymore?’ It was very funny,” Ripa says. “But then, it made perfect sense to them because they’re like, ‘Oh, this is a show we’ve gotten to watch for years in the kitchen.’”
Ripa continues: “Although, our son Michael was very upset that he wasn’t considered for the job, which I thought was the funniest thing I ever heard. He’s like, ‘When Dad has an acting job, I’m a guest host.'”
