Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos Share Devastating News: ‘One of the Toughest Things We’ve Had to Do as a Married Couple’

Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are mourning the loss of one of their own: their family’s dog, Chewie. The Live with Kelly and Mark co-hosts announced on their talk show on Wednesday, February 5, that they had to put down their white and brown Shih Tzu due to a health emergency.

“We had a rough day yesterday. We had to say goodbye to Chewie yesterday,” Consuelos said, explaining that the couple had a vet come to their New York City apartment to perform in-home humane euthanasia. “Chewie had stopped eating for a couple of days and had been eating less and less for the past few weeks. She was extremely dehydrated and had some neurological stuff going down. And you think, ‘Okay, I’m doing the right thing, this is going to be not easy but…’ It’s probably one of the toughest things we’ve had to do as a married couple.”

Consuelos explained that he and Ripa decided to put Chewie down to save her from the pain she would have experienced if she continued to stay alive. “I know pet owners at home can understand this,” he said. “It takes a pet owner to understand this kind of loss. It’s grief. It really is grief. But knowing that we did the right thing because it was just going to be really, really, really bad over the next few days for her.”

Ripa and Consuelos — who met at an audition for All My Children (in which they played love interests Hayley Vaughn and Mateo Santos) in 1995 — first met Chewie during a past adotoption segment on Live. “If it wasn’t for this show, we wouldn’t know Chewie,” Consuelos said. “She grew up with our kids.”

Ripa, for her part, apologized to the audience for struggling to talk to through her tears. “I’m really sorry. I thought I got it all out, guys. I really thought I got it all out and I apologize because this is not how I wanted this to go down,” she said before sharing her fondest memories of Chewie. “She gave us so much. We’re filled with gratitude for this dog. … As each one of our kids left for college and moved out on our own, Chewie remained right there. Our steadfast companion.”

She continued, “We’ve been so lucky. We’re very fortunate people in our lives; we’ve not had loss in our lives, a tremendous loss like this. We still have all of our parents. We’re so fortunate. I feel very bad crying in front of you when people have — there are much bigger problems in the world, and I understand that. But you have to understand that this dog was so special, and she was such a great girl.”

Ripa also revealed the surprising reaction from her neighborhood after her community learned of her dog’s death.  “It was, dare I say, presidential,” Ripa said. “People came people like the mail carrier. People came to say goodbye to Chewie because she was such a beloved member of the community. Not just our dog, she was like the neighborhood dog.”

Consuelos ended the segment by revealing the first thing she died after Chewie passed away. “She never let us kiss her face, she was very precious about her face. She was not that dog,” she said. “And after she passed away last night, I kissed her 1,000 times on her face. I kissed her nose, I’d never kissed her nose before.” She continued, “I know that she was like somewhere in dog heaven, pissed off. But I didn’t care because it just was so nice to have that.”

Along with Chewie, Consuelos and Ripa also share Lena, a Maltese/Shih Tzu mix that the family adopted in 2020. Ripa and Consuelos married in 1996. They share three children: sons Michael Joseph, 27, and Joaquin Antonio, 21, and daughter Lola, 23.