Mark Consuelos Surprises Wife Kelly Ripa with Flowers for 26th Anniversary of the Day They Met
Mark Consuelos had a sweet surprised for Kelly Ripa on Tuesday, on what turned out to be a very significant occasion in the couple’s long relationship.
During Wednesday’s Live with Kelly and Ryan, the longtime host revealed that her husband had surprised her the day before with a bouquet of roses to celebrate the 26th anniversary of the day they first met.
“So sweet. Isn’t that sweet?” gushed Ripa, 49. “He brought me five roses. I’m really not sure the significance of the five roses. I didn’t want to split hairs, but I thought it was really sweet.”
Consuelos, 48, was visiting New York from Toronto, where he films Riverdale. Ripa said he had shown up outside the gym without warning and gifted her the flowers unexpectedly, as she was exiting.
“I left the gym and he’s standing outside,” she remembered. “I have my ear pods in and I hear, ‘Hey sexy.’ And it’s so funny, it never occurs to me that this person is talking to me. … I’m like, ‘I’m about to be mugged by somebody flirting with somebody who doesn’t even have the thoughtfulness to pay attention to me while he’s mugging her!’ So I look up and my husband is there. And he was talking to me, it turns out!”
“He had flowers for me, and he said, ‘I have to tell you something. It dawned on me as I was flying home, that today is 26 years to the day since we met,’ ‘ Ripa added. “Isn’t that crazy? I said, ‘You are kidding me, how did you know that?’ He goes, ‘I worked it out in my head.’ “
RELATED: A Look Back at Kelly Ripa & Mark Consuelos’ Sweet Love Story
Ripa met Conseulos in 1994 at his screen test for All My Children. At the time, Ripa was playing Hayley Vaughan on the ABC soap opera. Conseulos was auditioning for Mateo Santos, Haley’s love interest.
Back in 2018, Ripa said that she knew Consuelos was “the one” the second she saw a photo of him.“They had been looking for this character for some time. They were looking really for a Latino actor … and so I had auditioned every Latino actor in the city and around the city and then California,” Ripa told Bruce Bozzi on his SiriusXM radio show. “And then all of a sudden, Judy Blye Wilson, who was the casting director at All My Children, said, ‘I found him.’ “
When Ripa gazed at Consuelos’ photograph, she said it was love at first sight.
“I was not a hopeless romantic. I never thought about getting married, it never occurred to me that I would grow old with someone. I just thought I would be living my single girl life in the city and sort of like moving. … I had no responsibilities and I was earning a good living on this soap opera … [But] when I saw him, the photograph of him, I saw my entire future with him flash before — like I saw it,” said Ripa. “And I [didn’t] believe in any of that and now I do because of that moment.”
Reflecting on their meet-cute, Consuelos told HuffPost Live in 2014 he was focused on work, having just graduated college. “I thought she was adorable, hot and sexy and all that stuff, but I was very focused,’ he said. “I didn’t really think I had a chance with her, so I wasn’t really focused on that.”
RELATED: Kelly Ripa Says Marriage Is a ‘Marathon’ and Shares Her Relationship Advice: ‘Push Through’
Nearly three decades later, the actors have a loving marriage and three children (sons Michael, 22, and Joaquin, 16, and daughter Lola, 18).
Just in January, Ripa revealed on Live with Kelly and Ryan the advice she’d give to newlyweds.
“You’re going to fight, you’re going to have disagreements. Relationships, marriages are not sprints, it’s a marathon,” she said. “There’s going to be like, mile 24, when you’re like, ‘I quit.’ But you just got to push through. Just push through.”
The key to making it through the rough patches? Accepting the moments of frustration and taking a step back to look at the bigger picture.
“There’s really nothing that’s that insurmountable, besides abuse or things of that nature,” she said. “You’re going to fight. You’re going to have disagreements. You’re going to fundamentally not agree on things. And if you take a breath, you usually can’t remember what you’re fighting about.”
