Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are saying goodbye to their television studio. The last episode filmed in the old studio was on Tuesday, April 1. It was an emotional day on the set. Not a dry eye was in the room.
The Final Show
This day has been coming. The couple announced that they were changing studios. The former studio, located in the Upper West Side, was the same studio where Regis Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford filmed LIVE! The daytime talk show will move downtown.
Ripa and Consuelos didn’t take this change lightly. So many memories were made. Ripa joined the show in 2001 as Philbin’s co-host. After his exit in 2011, she co-hosted with Michael Strahan and Ryan Seacrest. Since then, the show has become a home to Ripa and her husband. Though Consuelos joined as co-host in 2023, the couple has made many memories there.
“Our kids grew up here,” Consuelos told PEOPLE. “They’d come to visit mom here a lot — they were always backstage, even when they were babies.” Meanwhile, Ripa recalled the times when their kids would visit her at work. “They would go to All My Children with me, they would come here with me… we meant when we say they grew up in this building, in these four walls,” she shared.
A Family Show
LIVE! truly became a family over the years. It’s not because Ripa and Consuelos’ three kids visited there. It involved the crew members and production company. “Some of our closest friends are the people that work here. We’re a family at Live, and growing up, those were some of the people our kids were closest to,” Consuelos explained.
Ripa revealed that their kids have “full-text chains with some of the people here.” Lola, 23, considers some of the producers her other “moms.” They’re close confidants that their kids can turn to for anything. Ripa and Consuelos also share Michael, 27, and Joaquin, 22.
The show also brought the couple together. Though they married in 1996, they briefly broke up before then. They were required to attend a taping of Live with Regis and Kathie Lee. Ripa and Consuelos realized they were meant to stay together. Consuelos popped the question, and the rest was history.
“So we owe a lot to this place. And it’s going to be hard to replicate,” Ripa added. (Find out how AMC’s Jill Larson shocked Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos.)
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