Kelly Ripa's New "Live" Co-Host Will Be Husband Mark Consuelos

For some people, working with a partner or spouse is ideal: What could be better than spending every day together, understanding the challenges associated with each other's career, and supporting one another through successes and difficult times? For others, the separation between work and home life is essential. There's no right or wrong camp to fall into—marriages in which couples do and do not work together can be equally successful, and you may find that your desire for co-employment status may change over time. Case in point? Kelly Ripa and husband Mark Consuelos, who previously worked together on All My Children and will now co-host Live With Kelly and Mark each morning, People reports.

The news of the couple sharing the screen for the hit morning show each day comes after Ryan Seacrest, Ripa's co-host since 2017, announced his departure today, February 16, 2023. Ripa has been a co-host on Live since 2001; at the time, she joined Regis Philbin as a replacement for Kathie Lee Gifford. In 2012, Michael Strahan joined the show and sat beside Ripa until his departure in 2016.

"I'm so grateful to have spent the last six years beside my dear friend of too many decades to count and will miss starting my days with Ryan," Ripa said in a statement regarding Seacrest's exit. "Ryan's energy, passion and love for entertainment is one-of-a-kind."

Ripa and Consuelos first met on the set of All My Children in 1995. "I thought she was adorable, hot and sexy and all that stuff," Consuelos told HuffPost in 2014 as he reflected on on meeting his now wife. "But I was very focused—I didn't really think I had a chance with her, so I wasn't really focused on that." For her part, Ripa has said she was taken by Consuelos before she actually laid eyes on him. “I saw my husband in a photograph before I saw him. I knew when I saw his photograph,” Ripa said on Radio Andy’s Lunch with Bruce in 2018, Us Weekly reports. “I was not a hopeless romantic. I never thought about getting married, it never occurred to me that I would grow old with someone. I just thought I would be living my single girl life in the city and sort of like moving...When I saw him, the photograph of him, I saw my entire future with him flash before—like I saw it.” 

The couple tied the knot in a Las Vegas elopement on May 1, 1996, and they now share three children, Michael, Lola, and Joaquin. The secret to their long-lasting success? In September of 2022, Ripa told USA Today, "We compromise all the time. We always are saying that when we negotiate with each other, we are only mildly disappointed in the end result and that is a success. And then the obstinance is we are too stubborn to ever quit on each other. We're lifers. His parents have been married 60 years, my parents have been married 61 years. That's all we know. We only know how to compromise and be together."