Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos receive radical news about Live! —The co-host will be replaced

Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos have been nurturing their ABC show Live with Kelly and Mark together for close to two years.

In April 2023, Kelly’s longtime co-host, Ryan Seacrest, moved on and was replaced by Mark.

Immediately, the on-screen chemistry between the husband and wife duo made for riveting TV and they kept their audience and grew it.

Now, the pair have received monumental news about Live! and it looks like its future is bright.

This week, the ratings report revealed: “Live with Kelly and Mark skyrockets to season highs in all key measures earning best total viewer audience and household rating in nearly a year.”

© ABC

The press release announced the show’s audience had grown for a third week in a row and had seen significant year-over-year gains.

In addition, Live! has been syndication’s No.1 most-viewed talk show of the week for 102 weeks straight.

Neither Kelly nor Mark addressed the news on social media but were likely elated by the popularity of the show.

© ABC/LIVE with Kelly and Mark

When it was first suggested that they team up as co-hosts, Kelly was against it. She told Deadline: “I just felt like we’re not that interesting, and we’re not a very controversial couple. We don’t really get up to much.”

She added: “I always liken us to watching paint dry.”

Since agreeing to the gig, Kelly can appreciate that there’s more to them than she thought.

© Getty Images

“I do think that there is something very possibly relatable about our relationship,” she later confessed. “We have disagreements like a normal couple, and we’re not afraid to let them unfold on the air and in front of America, and I think people find a lot of themselves in that.”

Kelly can appreciate her no nonsense partner in crime too. “He says what’s on his mind,” she remarked about her husband. “If he’s thinking it, he says it. I’ve done this a long time and oftentimes people will adjust their natural personalities to pander to what they think the audience wants to hear, and Mark will tell people what he thinks, and he doesn’t care if it’s not a popular opinion. It gives him an edginess that I think is really missing in the landscape today.”

The couple have been married since 1996 and share three children together.

They met on the set of All My Children in 1994 and got married two years later.

Kelly and Mark’s long-lasting relationship is something they often get asked about in interviews, and in 2023, Mark spoke about their marriage while chatting to Mr Feelgood. 

He said: “Find someone that you enjoy walking on the beach with, talking about the future, about what you want. We did that when we were 24 years old, and we still do it now. We dream about what we could do—like, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could do this?'”