Kelly Ripa, Mark Consuelos hid marriage from “All My Children” crew for months until Wendy Williams exposed it

Ripa recalled Wendy Williams breaking the news in 1996 after a courthouse eyewitness leaked the information to the radio host.

Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos tried to keep their 1996 marriage a secret from their All My Children soap opera colleagues for months — that is, until Wendy Williams dished details of their sweet nuptials on her former radio show.

Consuelos teased the couple's upcoming Live excursion to film episodes in Las Vegas — where the couple eloped 27 years ago — on Thursday morning by describing the journey as heading "back to the scene of the crime," which Ripa elaborated on during the talk show's opening host chat.

"Our secret wedding, discovered by none other than Wendy Williams. True facts, I'm not kidding," Ripa explained, noting that the pair traveled to the Clark County courthouse to get a marriage license, where an eyewitness saw them and leaked the news to Williams, who was then a prominent gossip reporter on New York City radio.

"We'd eloped. It'd been a few months at that point, we'd been married for three months, nobody at [All My Children] knew we were even dating, much less married to each other. We're brushing our teeth and we've got Wendy Williams' radio show on. We're listening, and she's like, 'I've got celebrity dish,'" Ripa remembered. "The celebrities, I guess they had a broad use of the term back then, was the fact that two soap stars from All My Children, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos ... eloped in Las Vegas. There was this eyewitness that worked in the Clark County courthouse that said we eloped, and the news broke, and we had to tell everybody we were married."

Ripa explained that the couple, who starred together on the beloved soap, kept their marriage a secret from their coworkers "because we worked together and we didn't want it to be perceived that somehow we couldn't work together," she said, later saying that "it seemed like a good idea" at the time, though Consuelos eventually labeled it a "hair-brained idea" in the end.

In an interview with PEOPLE, actor James Kiberd, who played the uncle of Ripa's All My Children character, recalled that the couple both worked "hard" and had "lots of talent," and suggested that their relationship didn't interfere with production.

Ripa and Consuelos will return to Las Vegas on Feb. 26 and 27, where they'll broadcast new episodes from the city's Fontainebleau locale.

Live With Kelly and Mark airs weekdays in syndication. Check your local listings for showtimes in your area.

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