Kelly Ripa Puts Mark Consuelos on The Spot Over His Annoying Texting Habit

Kelly Ripa is calling out husband Mark Consuelos for his texting habits. Ripa, 54, had her husband and co-host in the hot seat during the Thursday, Dec. 12 episode of Live With Kelly and Mark as the Riverdale alum shared a study from Indiana University that found “those who use a lot of emojis tend to have higher emotional intelligence.”

Ripa immediately stopped her husband for a “flag on the play,” teasing him, “I know somebody who really abuses emojis. As a matter of fact, it’s communicating only with emojis, and you have to decipher what the emojis mean.”

Consuelos defended himself as liking “short and sweet responses when people ask questions,” but Ripa insisted it’s more like he doesn’t respond at all. Consuelos defended his texting methods then explaining, “I’m like thumbs up, heart. If it’s one of my buddies and he said something cool, ‘Hey that’s gonna be awesome,’ I do a bicep flex. That’s how I communicate. Real fast.”

The actor, who shares kids Michael, 27, Lola, 23, and Joaquin, 21, with Ripa, quipped, “So I guess I’m a genius. No, it doesn’t mean that. It means I’m emotionally intelligent.”

Ripa then demonstrated a typical text conversation between her and her husband, starting off with her text, “Do you want to eat at 7 or at 8?” Consuelos said he would react with a heart but Ripa insisted she would have to press him before he would ultimately respond with a simply thumbs up.

“Short and sweet,” Consuelos insisted, as Ripa said it was “short and sweet, but also non-committal” and “not answering the question.” The Great Raid actor then admitted he would usually just read “the first part of the text” before not responding. “Exactly. That’s not emotional intelligence, that’s avoidance,” Ripa pointed out. Despite his wife’s complaints, Consuelos joked that the study proves he’s “as smart as can be.”

Consuelos and Ripa’s texting discussion came the day after they discussed their recent Architectural Digest home shoot on the air, with Ripa revealing there was one part of letting the publication inside their New York City townhouse that made her “very upset.”

“They were like, ‘Kelly, we made scrambled eggs as if you had made scrambled eggs,’ ” Ripa revealed on the Dec. 11 episode of Live With Kelly and Mark. “And I looked at these scrambled eggs and was like, ‘I would never make scrambled eggs like this.’ Because I am very proud of my scrambled eggs.”

“These were dry. These didn’t look right,” she added. “They didn’t look like any additives were in there. There was no soft cheese, there was no crème fraîche. They were nothing [like] the way I make the eggs, so I was very upset.”