Kelly Ripa Says Wendy Williams ‘Outed’ Her Relationship With Mark Consuelos
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos eloped to Las Vegas in 1996. They managed to keep their marriage a secret from their fellow All My Children co-stars until Wendy Williams outed their relationship.
Wendy Williams spilled secret details of Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’ elopement
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos met when he auditioned for the part of All My Children‘s Mateo Santos in 1995. The character was to be a love interest for Ripa’s character, Hayley Vaughn.
Sparks flew between the couple, and they began dating. However, they kept their relationship a secret while at work.
On May 1, 1996, the couple eloped to Las Vegas. They wed at Nevada’s Chapel of The Bells.
However, they didn’t share the news with their All My Children co-workers. But their wedding details were still available to be found.
“Our secret wedding, discovered by none other than Wendy Williams. True facts, I’m not kidding,” Ripa said during an episode of Live with Kelly and Mark (per The New York Post). She co-hosts the series with her husband Consuelos.
“We’re brushing our teeth, and we’ve got Wendy Williams’ radio show on. We’re listening, and she’s like, ‘I’ve got celebrity dish,’ ” Ripa explained.
What did Wendy Williams say that outed Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’ marriage?
Wendy Williams’ radio career in New York City began in 1989 at 98.7 KISS FM in New York City as a fill-in DJ. She landed her show on the station until 1998, as it morphed into Hot 97.
Williams transitioned to a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania radio station until 2001 when WBLS-FM hired her for her syndicated afternoon drive show. She peppered the music she played with celebrity gossip, where she broke the news of Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’ marriage.
Ripa shared details of the moment the radio personality outed her marriage live on air. “The celebrities, I guess they had a broad use of the term back then, was the fact that two soap stars from All My Children, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, eloped in Las Vegas. This eyewitness who worked in the Clark County courthouse said we eloped, and the news broke, and we had to tell everybody we were married.”
“We’d eloped. It’d been a few months at that point. We’d been married for three months. Nobody at [All My Children] knew we were even dating, much less married to each other,” Ripa explained.
Why did Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos keep their relationship and marriage a secret?
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos decided to keep their relationship and marriage a secret for what they believed was a good reason. They feared that since they worked together, they didn’t want it to be “perceived that somehow we couldn’t work together,” Ripa admitted.
Ripa admits that the idea to conceal the marriage “seemed like a good idea at the time.” However, Consuelos acknowledged that the scheme was a “hair-brained idea.”
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos co-host the syndicated talk show Live With Kelly and Mark. Wendy Williams’ current health struggles were documented in the Lifetime Limited series Where Is Wendy Williams?
