Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos had a reunion on their Live show with a former All My Children costar.
Ripa, 53, and Consuelos, also 53, who are married in real life and starred as a couple on All My Children from 1995 to 2002, had a child on the show, a baby boy named Enzo. Although the duo lost track of Enzo in real life, the girl who played him surprised Ripa and Consuelos by sitting in the audience on Monday, June 17.
“Yeah … I’m a girl, not a boy,” the former actress said. “I have a twin brother. At the time, he didn’t have enough hair, so I was baby Enzo for you.”
The woman, who shared that she turns 23 next month, explained that she is actually a few days younger than Ripa and Consuelos’ real-life daughter, Lola. (The couple share sons Michael, 27, Joaquin, 21 and Lola.)
“I guess on the set my mom held Lola and you held me,” she told the talk show hosts, adding that she no longer acts and All My Children was her “big break.”
Ripa and Consuelos actually were introduced to each other on the set of the soap opera in 1995. Consuelos was cast as Mateo Santos, the love interest to Ripa’s character, Hayley Vaughan.
“They’d been looking for this character for some time … They didn’t want a dark-haired guy, they wanted a Latino actor,” Ripa explained during a SiriusXM interview in August 2018. “So I had auditioned every Latino actor in the city. Then all of a sudden, Judy Blye Wilson, who was the casting director in All My Children, said, ‘I found him.’ [Judy] showed me his picture and when I saw him … I saw my entire future with him flash before [my eyes].”
Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa on “All My Children” ABC
After immediately hitting it off, Ripa and Consuelos tied the knot in 1996 and later welcomed son Michael in 1997 followed by Lola in 2001 and Joaquin in 2003.
The couple celebrated their 28th wedding anniversary on the set of Live with Kelly and Mark in May.
After walking on set to their favorite song, Stevie Wonder’s “As,” Consuelos reflected on their big milestone on air.
“I was in bed last night trying to do the math,” he shared. “My benchmark for a long time is going through first grade to being a senior in high school. Twelve years is a long time. Like, when you were a kid, that’s a whole lifetime. That’s like doing that twice plus a PhD. Plus four years in college and master’s program!”
Ripa joked at the time, “You have your PhD in being married. Should I call you Dr. Consuelos?” Consuelos laughed at the idea and teased her about “maybe doing a house call later.”