Kelly Ripa reveals worry for son Michael as he spends time away from home
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos were one of hundreds of people worried about their family members this week as Hurricane Helene ravaged through Florida, North Carolina, and other southern states.
Though the LIVE with Kelly and Mark co-hosts, who have been married since 1996, are based in New York City, their eldest son Michael was spending time in Florida as the category four hurricane, which has destroyed entire towns, stormed through.
Luckily, Michael, who is an actor, was not near the most impacted areas, as his mom shared during the latest episode of LIVE.
During the Monday, September 30 installment of Kelly and Mark’s talk show, Kelly shared how she kept texting him: “Are you safe, are you okay?” to which Michael confirmed that he was, and that thankfully strong winds were the worst of it.
However, there was one place that both Kelly and Mark hold dear to their hearts that wasn’t so lucky.
Mark left Kelly in shock as he revealed that Woody’s Waterfront, a bar and grill in St. Pete Beach in Florida, had been wiped out.
“No… Oh gosh,” she said, as Mark added that “it’s gone,” but maintained that there are already plans to rebuild it.
“We had some of our very finest and first dates there,” Kelly then recalled, further lamenting: “That makes me sad,” though she joked that “it’s a sign,” before maintaining: “I’m just looking for trouble.”
Kelly and Mark met in 1995 on the set of All My Children, in which they starred as on-screen couple Hayley Vaughan and Mateo Santos, and they eloped in Las Vegas one year later.
In addition to Michael, they are also parents to Lola, 23, who like her older brother graduated from New York University, and is now a singer, plus Joaquín, who is a student, and a wrestler, at the University of Michigan.
Though they had had their fair share of on-screen interactions since leaving All My Children, Kelly and Mark properly reunited on the screen for the first time in over 20 years last year when Mark officially became Kelly’s co-host on LIVE.
She has been hosting LIVE since 2001, first with Regis Philbin until 2011, then with Michael Strahan from 2012 to 2016, and lastly before Mark with Ryan Seacrest from 2017 to 2023.