Kelly Ripa reveals hubby Mark Consuelos used to be 'insanely jealous'
When it comes to Hollywood marriages, there are very few that stand the test of time. Whether it’s the clashing of vanities, personalities, or fame, it’s truly hard to ‘ship anyone these days. Except for Live! host Kelly Ripa and actor Mark Consuelos, who have been married with children since *does the math* 1996. That’s like a century in Hollywood years.
But now in a new, frank conversation between the pair, they are admitting that the early years of their marriage were “very hard” due to Mark’s tendency to be “insanely jealous.” Yikes.
The couple, who will soon be co-hosting Live! together after current co-host Ryan Seacrest departs the show in April, had the conversation during their Let’s Talk Off Camera SiriusXM podcast, where the former soap star revealed,“My biggest complaint about you over the course of our marriage, and this is not recent because it definitely changed… but you used to be insanely jealous and that was a hard pill to swallow.”
“It’s very hard being married to somebody who is jealous … It's unattractive."
With Mark agreeing, Kelly then recalled an incident that occurred the first week of their marriage where Mark’s naked jealousy was on full display
“It was our first week of marriage, because we didn’t take our honeymoon until later. You were working and I went to visit you in Boston,” she recounted. “We went to this Italian restaurant and the waiter was like a very cute old man, he’s definitely in his 70s, if not 80s. He leaned down and he said, ‘And for the principessa?’”
“I thought it was so cute that this little old man called me a princess, and I looked at him and I gave him my order in a very smiley way,” she continued. “And he walked away and you picked a horrible fight.”
To his credit, Mark confirms the story, saying, "I got upset,” and then adds, “I remember that. Look at age 25, I was pretty insane. But that jealousy thing definitely followed me for a while. I’m not jealous anymore.”
“It’s ugly,” he continued. “As ugly as it feels to the person who has to be on the receiving end of it, it’s such an ugly feeling inside.”
“If this is any consolation, you know you’re being crazy. The jealous person knows that this is wrong and it’s ugly, but they can’t help it.”
He adds, “I wanted to do some work on myself and that was one of the major things that I needed to work on because it was getting in the way.”
The couple, who share three kids (daughter Lola, 21, son Michael, 25, and son Joaquin, 20), didn’t end there with the airing of the dirty laundry. Mark, who spends most days in Vancouver shooting the CW show Riverdale, said his wife is a fan of hanging up the phone mid-convo.
"You haven't done this in such a long time, but when you're pissed off on the phone, you hang up," he revealed, adding, "Sometimes if the person's like, let's say, in Vancouver, and you don't pick up the phone in a day, a day and a half, it's quite unsettling."
"That's so bad. It's so bad," Kelly admitted. "That's a byproduct of how I grew up. I come from a family of famous hanger-uppers."
The pair went on to admit that they have their “ups and downs; everyone has ups and downs," but they found that marriage counseling after all these years and three children was extremely beneficial for them.
Saying that he wants to be married forever to Kelly, Mark said, “One of the great benefits of going to marriage counseling — especially when things are good and you want them to get better — is that the old habits and the old behaviours you kind of hung on to, I thought twice about doing them because I knew that within a week or five days, I would be accountable to somebody and that person would look at me like, 'You want to explain that?'”
Live! With Kelly and Ryan airs every morning at 9:00 AM EST on CTV.
