The couple met on the sets of 'All My Children' and fell in love. They were lovers on-screen and off-screen too.
To the world outside, longterm relationships might seem boring but to the two people who are in it, it's a rollercoaster ride that never ends. A couple goes through many challenges and happy moments in their marriage that keep things interesting. A love story doesn't end with "...and, they lived happily ever after." It only begins there.
When Kelly Ripa saw Mark Consuelos for the first time, she knew she would spend her life with him. They were young actors when they met and while Ripa was already working on the soap opera All My Children, as Hayley Vaughan, Consuelos wanted to work in it. Ripa first saw his photograph as he wanted to audition for the role of Mateo Santos and she saw her "entire future" with him before her eyes.
"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," she said on SiriusXM's Lunch with Bruce in August 2018. "I had no responsibilities and I was earning a good living on the soap opera...So when I saw him, the photograph of him, I saw my entire future with him flash before [my eyes]. Like. I saw it. I [didn't] believe in any of that and now I do because of that moment."
Ripa had helped him audition for the role of Mateo Santos in 1995. After that, they played lovers on-screen and fell deeply in love with each other off-screen too. It took them only a year to know that they are meant for each other. On May 1, 1996, the couple eloped to Las Vegas, but not before they faced a little hiccup.
He had asked her to marry him while they were at his apartment eating pizza and drinking wine, as per OprahMag. "We would go out with groups of people from work and slowly each date would go that the group started getting smaller and smaller until it was just us two," the Riverdale actor told Andy Cohen. "I was shy, I wasn’t very aggressive that way."
Unfortunately, they broke up for a day, but he knew "pretty early on" that Ripa was the one. The Husband for Hire actor revealed what happened after the break up. "She was visiting her family in South Jersey and we both had to meet and do an appearance on Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. We were pushing furniture for a Queen for the Day Mother’s Day special and we were together and she wouldn’t talk to me and that made me go crazy," he said. "So I followed her in Central Park. I stalked her, and then we went back to my place and we got married the next day. It wasn't a big breakup," he said, as per OprahMag.
The Hope & Faith actress believes that their timing was just right. "I think we found each other at the right time in our lives. We were really young, not that that's the right time in somebody's life, but we were really like, pliable, right? Like we were pliable to each other. We really, like, learned - we learned each other well and so with that comes a certain level of comfort and confidence and experimentation and just fun like we have fun," she said, as per Bang Showbiz.
The Live with Kelly and Ryan star and Consuelos are parents to three children and their oldest is 23.
The 49-year-old mom-of-three has a great analogy for marriage. "You're going to fight, you're going to have disagreements. Relationships, marriages are not sprints, it's a marathon. There's going to be like, mile 24, when you're like, 'I quit.' But you just got to push through. Just push through. There's really nothing that's that insurmountable, besides abuse or things of that nature. You're going to fundamentally not agree on things. And if you take a breath, you usually can't remember what you're fighting about," she said.
Her husband is no less in his admiration for her. He revealed to Fox news one of the secrets of their marriage. "I’m crazy about my wife," he said. "We both come from families, our parents are still together—family is super important to us. We have three great kids, and that also bonds you, having that experience together."
The couple celebrated 24 years together on May 1, 2020. In an Instagram post, she said, "Happy Anniversary to the love of my life, or at least half my life @instasuelos cheers to 24 years!"
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