Kelly Ripa teases exit from her Live talk show after 24 years: ‘I don’t intend to work at this job for the rest of my life’

Kelly Ripa admitted to thinking about retiring from Live after 24 years of co-hosting the program with various co-hosts, including her husband Mark Consuelos and Ryan Seacrest.

While discussing her longtime hosting gig during a chat with Purist magazine, the  54-year-old talk show host revealed that she doesn’t ‘intend to work at this job for the rest of’ her life.

‘I do talk about retirement with great interest, but right now I’m very happy, especially working with Mark,’ she told the outlet.

As for becoming an empty-nester after her youngest child, Joaquin, headed to the University of Michigan for college last year, the mother-of-three raved about all her kids leaving home.

‘I know that there are women out there who dread it, and I was dreading it, and it is so great,’ she continued.

The All My Children alum revealed having her adult children move out has given her and Consuelos, 52, ‘rediscover each other as a couple.’

‘We talk about vacations and where we want to retire. It’s a really exciting time,’ the actress added.

Elsewhere in the interview, Ripa opened up about navigating being ‘risk-averse’ but also ‘doing one of the most challenging and scary things,’ like hosting a live television show for millions of viewers.

‘I think the risk-averse quality I have is probably the reason I stayed with the same job for so long,’ she reflected. ‘Other offers come along, but I like to stick with what I know.’

The star started out at Live With Regis & Kelly in 2001 after Kathy Lee Gifford left.

In March, she told Variety that she ‘had a really difficult time’ at the beginning and pushed for an office to have some privacy.

Despite seeing empty office spaces in the building, which she easily could have slipped into to make her calls, leave her purse and store her paperwork, Ripa was told no.

She added she was informed the empty office spaces were reserved for executives, who visited from Los Angeles.

Then, four years later, in 2005, she was given a janitor’s closet they cleared out and moved a desk into.

It clearly was a way to keep her ego in check.

She thought she might finally get her own office when her costar Regis – who died in 2020 – retired from the show in 2011.

But that did not happen.

Instead of her inheriting Philbin’s spacious office, it was left empty.

‘They said, “Oh, no, we’re saving that.” And I said, “Saving it for what?”‘ she commented.

‘And they go, “Well, for when the new guy comes.” And I looked at them, and I said, “I am the new guy,”‘ she said.

Kelly did not get the go ahead to take the office. So instead she pushed her way into it.

‘All of those offices that were not available to me were suddenly made available [to others], with walls knocked down to make them twice as big,’ she added.

‘It was fascinating for me to watch — the need to make the new guy comfortable and respected, but I couldn’t use those offices,’ she said.

‘I had to use the broom closet.’

And when she had to use the bathroom, she had to go out to the main one where the audience members were directed.

‘We have a studio audience — like 250 people! — and I have to queue up,’ she explained.

‘Particularly when I was pregnant, it was extraordinarily exhausting to have to wait in line.

‘I have to host the show, and I’m still waiting in line to use the bathroom,’ she said. ‘It just seemed, you know, a very needlessly difficult situation.’