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TV host Kelly Ripa and actor Mark Consuelos have been happily married for over 25 years. They’ve been with each other through some of the best and worst moments of each other’s lives. At one point, early in their marriage, one night of passionate love between then led to a scary visit to the emergency room.

Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos posing together against an orange backdrop
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos | Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos got married in 1996

Kelly Ripa was first introduced to households everywhere in the early 1990s on ABC’s hit soap opera All My Children. In 1995, she met her future husband, actor Mark Consuelos, on the set of the show. The two co-stars got married in 1996 in Las Vegas.

The couple went on to have three children in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Ripa has been the co-host of the daily talk show Live! since 2001, sharing co-hosting duties with Regis Philbin, Michael Strahan, and Ryan Seacrest.

She ended up in the emergency room with ovarian cysts

After three decades in the spotlight, Ripa opened up about some of her most personal moments in her memoir Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories, released in September 2022. In an advance excerpt shared with Haute Living, Ripa recounted one night she was having sex with Consuelos when she passed out, and later woke up in the hospital. It turned out she had two ovarian cysts.

“My eyes shift between the fuzzy images on the screen, the remnants of my ovarian tormentor, and Mark happily snacking away,” Ripa remembered. “Sex can be so traumatic I think, and yet one of us is completely undaunted. There he is, happily munching on the saltines now and ordering a second apple juice. Mark could be at a movie, or a spa. Instead, I’m flat on my back wondering when the other two cysts will burst.”

Ripa found humor in the situation when she realized that Consuelos had dressed her up for her hospital visit in a skimpy outfit and high heels.

“Here is my husband, who is, dare I say, stylish, well-dressed at all times, and yet he dressed me like a dime store prostitute in my time of need,” Ripa wrote. “It’s still baffling to me to this day that this is the best costume for the day that he could find for me, to the point where, when I was on the stretcher, I thought I was dreaming; I was having a nightmare. I didn’t realize I had come to.”

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Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos have a strong marriage

Ripa and Consuelos’ marriage has remained strong for over 25 years, and in the process of writing her memoir, Consuelos was his wife’s biggest supporter. She told Haute Living that they balance each other out perfectly.

“You have to have a yin and a yang, right? Mark is so quiet in the way he goes through his life, and yet he married a blowhorn, if you will,” she said. “I am this open book who will even turn the pages for you if you don’t keep up, and yet he allowed me to share these intimate moments because frankly, I think he found them entertaining. At the end of the day, I don’t think he would still be in this marriage if he didn’t find me entertaining.”