Most people are terrible to talk to over the phone. If nothing else, we ve learned that much over this unholy year. Kelly Ripa, who Zooms under the unassuming handle “Kelly’s iPad,” is the rare exception. The moment I enter the chat, she launches into a story. “I had to go to a specialist to have this root canal, and he said to me, ‘Who’s tall in your family?’ Which is a very strange thing for an oral surgeon to say,” she begins. “And I said, ‘Oh, my mother’s tall. Wait, why would you ask that?’ And he said, ‘Oh, you have tall teeth.’” She pauses just long enough for me to express mild confusion, then continues: “So I said, ‘What does
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Kelly recently shared some heartwarming throwback snaps of herself and her husband Mark Consuelos with their older two children.
They are the proud parents of Michael, 23, Lola, 19, and Joaquin, 17, but the snaps were taken in 2001 before their youngest was born. Happy birthday Benjamin Cohen! : She included a picture of herself holding Ben when he was an infant and another that was taken at his first birthday party
Kelly and Mark both became stars of the small screen as soap stars on All My Children but she then reached new heights of fame as a talk show host.
She found her current calling as the co-host of Live! With Regis Kelly alongside Regis Philbin, who retired in 2011 and died last year at the age of 88.
Kelly Ripa never, ever thought about becoming a morning talk-show mainstay. Yet, two decades after replacing Kathie Lee Gifford as Regis Philbin s cohost on the iconic
Live, Ripa is still going strong on the rise-and-shine perennial, with five Daytime Emmy awards for Outstanding Host to boot. It happened to me by accident, the onetime soap star, 50, recalls. While still on
All My Children, she was asked to fill in on
Live in November 2000 for a guest host who had a family emergency. In the process, Ripa instantly became a frontrunner to replace Gifford. The show had really reached an iconic level of pop culture where everyone knew Regis and Kathie Lee. . Everyone was really questioning, could we go on? executive producer Michael Gelman, who s often seen behind the cameras, interacting with the hosts, recalls. Kelly immediately lit up the room, and we knew there was something special. There was a certain charisma and humor and quickness that was really innate because
The Tonight Show this week, the
Live with Kelly and Ryan host was reflecting on her early days on the daytime talk show and recounted the astonishing incident.
When Kelly first began co-hosting the show alongside the late Regis Philbin in the early 2000s, she was actually only supposed to be a temporary fill-in, something which took any stakes or any nervousness away from the then 30-year-old presenter.
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WATCH: The moment Kelly Ripa s secret pregnancy was uncovered by a psychic
However, Kelly explained that her only concern was that she was very early on in her pregnancy with her and