Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are enjoying the benefits of being empty nesters. With all three of their children – sons Michael, 25, and Joaquin, 19, and daughter Lola, 21 – out of the house and attending college, the couple was recently able to do one task they’ve never been able to do throughout their 25-year marriage: a kid-free vacation.
On Tuesday’s episode of Live with Kelly and Ryan, Ripa ecstatically opened up about her and her husband’s recent multistate parents-only trip, telling co-host Ryan Seacrest, “this is our first vacation in 25 years without children and parents. … It’s usually us, with the kids or … kit and caboodle.” With youngest son Joaquin now attending the University of Michigan. Ripa explained that she and her husband “were like, ‘What are we going to do without the kids?’ And the kids were like, ‘What are you going to do without us!? We’re your whole lives!’ And I was like, ‘Wrong again, kids.’”
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Ripa and Consuelos ultimately opted for a well-deserved getaway, during which the couple “had the time of our lives.” The getaway included some rock climbing in Utah as the couple traveled “to the Amangiri [resort],” which Ripa said “is luxury. It’s like, the kind of trip we would take without kids.” The couple also traveled to Colorado, with Ripa hilariously admitting that she and her husband got “lost for maybe 45 minutes.” Ripa said it “was amazing because it is the discussion that we always have: How long will it take for Mark to eat me?” She joked that she “could see he was starting to get hungry and I said, ‘We agreed that I have to die of natural causes before you can dip into me as a food source.’ We’ve talked about it many times because we’ve already gone over the fact that I will not eat him because I have a hard time eating chicken that’s on the bone, much less my spouse. He, on the other hand, is like, ‘I can eat you in 3 seconds, no problem.’ But I wasn’t dead yet!” During the trip, Ripa also said she and her husband were hyperaware of other families.
We got a massage! I mean, there were kids there, don’t get me wrong. But I could see the other families looking at us. People were like, ‘Where are your kids?’” Ripa said. “And I was like, ‘They’re adults now. They have jobs. They couldn’t get off work.’ And they were like, ‘Wait, what? You have kids who are adults?’ ‘Yes, we have kids who are adults. But more importantly, they’re not on this trip.’”
Ripa and Consuelos first met in 1995 when they were co-stars on All My Children, with Ripa sharing on E!‘s event series Reunion Road Trip that the show “is responsible for my entire life. I don’t, like, say that lightly. I met my husband on All My Children. I had my children on All My Children.” A year later, the couple eloped on May 1, 1996, at the Chapel of the Bells in Las Vegas.
