Kelly Ripa Struggled in Early Days of Marriage to ‘Jealous’ Mark Consuelos: It Was ‘Very Hard’
Live with Kelly and Ryan host Kelly Ripa spoke about the difficulties of the early days of her 26-year marriage to Mark Consuelos. She shared this relatable and remarkable information during the debut episode of her SiriusXM podcast Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa.
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos have been married for two and a half decades
Ripa and Consuelos have one of the happiest and longest marriages in Hollywood. The duo is based in New York City where they have owned a townhome on the Upper East Side of Manhattan since 2013.
The location is ideal as Ripa stars in and is an executive producer of LIVE with Kelly and Ryan, which is also taped in the city. Consuelos is set to take over for Ryan Seacrest and co-star on the morning talk show alongside his wife.
The couple met on the set of the soap opera All My Children when Consuelos auditioned for the role of Mateo Santos. Ripa, an established cast member, was assigned as his screen test partner.
He got the part, and he and Ripa became friends and on-screen love interests. The couple was soon dating in real life, too, a relationship they kept quiet from their fellow castmates.
Months later, after a walk in Central Park ark followed by pizza at Consuelos’ apartment, he proposed marriage. The two eloped to Las Vegas on May 1, 1996.
Ripa left the soap to replace Katie Lee Gifford on Live. The couple welcomed three children in quick succession. Michael Joseph was first in1997. Daughter Lola Grace arrived in 2001. Their youngest son, Joaquin Antonio, was born in 2003.
However in their early days of marriage, Ripa struggled with Consuelos’ jealousy. She described in detail how they overcame that hurdle.
Kelly Ripa said it was ‘very hard’ to be married to ‘jealous’ Mark Consuelos
On the debut episode of her podcast Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa, the morning talk show host and actress revealed some of the struggles she and Mark Consuelos faced in the early days of their marriage. She reflected on these moments with candor.
“It’s very hard being married to somebody who is jealous,” Ripa said on the debut episode of her SiriusXM podcast. “My biggest complaint about you over the course of our marriage — and this is not recent, ’cause it definitely changed, and I don’t know if I changed or if you changed or if it was some combination of change — but you used to be insanely jealous.”
She continued, “And that was a hard pill to swallow. It’s very hard being married to somebody who is jealous. It’s unattractive.”
Ripa cited one event shortly after their marriage when an older waiter at a restaurant in Boston called her a princess in Italian. “The waiter was a very cute old man. He was definitely in his 70s, if not 80s,” Ripa remembered.
“I thought it was so cute that this old man called me a princess. And I looked at him and I gave him my order in a very smiley way. And he walked away and you picked a horrible fight with me.”
Consuelos agreed with Ripa’s statement, stating “I got upset.” He continued, “Look, at age 25, I was pretty insane. But that jealousy thing definitely followed me for a while,” he said.
Thankfully, jealousy is no longer an issue in their household
Alternate cover for my book, Live Wire, but thankfully @instasuelos intervened!
— Kelly Ripa (@KellyRipa) September 26, 2022
LIVE WIRE is available tomorrow wherever books are sold. https://t.co/hOc1cCffs6
The couple discussed at length the topic, with Consuelos explaining his reactions to his wife and the listening audience. He said he has grown as a man since the early days of their marriage.
“I’m not jealous anymore. … It’s a character flaw. It’s ugly. And as ugly as it feels to the person who is on the receiving end of it, it’s such an ugly feeling inside” he admitted.
“If this is any consolation, you know you’re being crazy. The jealous person knows that this is wrong and it’s ugly but they can’t help it,” Consuelos continued.
The actor concluded, “I wanted to do some work on myself. That was one of the major things that I needed to work on, because it was getting in the way.”
As for Ripa, she too admitted to some communications flaws in her and Consuelos’ relationship. She reportedly has a bad habit of hanging up the phone during a fight.
“That’s so bad. It’s so bad,” Ripa admitted. “That’s a byproduct of how I grew up. I come from a family of famous hanger-uppers.”
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos begin their journey as morning talk show hosts beginning on Apr. 17. The series will be rebranded LIVE with Kelly and Mark.
