Kelly Ripa Admits the Reason She Started Posting Thirst Traps on Instagram

Kelly Ripa had to bring her Instagram A game for Madonna. The Live With Kelly and Ryan co-host, 52, opened up about the start of her famous social media thirst traps of husband Mark Consuelos during an appearance on the Everything Iconic podcast with host Danny Pellegrino.

Ripa admitted that after getting a social media follow from the “Material Girl” singer herself, she knew she had to step up what she was posting to get her attention. “That happened to me when Madonna followed me and Isaac Boots told me. He’s like, ‘Oh my god. Madonna followed you and I was like, ‘What? What? What?!’ and I immediately sort of changed everything I posted,” she told Pellegrino. “I started posting only shirtless photos of Mark because I was like, ‘Madonna doesn’t want to see my kids. She wants to see eye candy.’”

Ripa joked that her shift in social media strategy was “dark-sided,” adding, “My thought bubbles of Madonna following me and me feeding her something was like, forget anybody else. I was playing to an audience of one for a while.” The Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories author and Riverdale star celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary in May and share three kids together – sons Michael, 25, and Joaquin, 19, and daughter Lola, 21.

 It seems like Consuelos has passed on his thirst-trapping ways to his eldest son, as Michael was included in PEOPLE’s 2022 Sexiest Man Alive issue under a segment about famous sexy sons of celebrities. “You would think he would tell us so we would pick up a couple of copies for the grandparents,” Ripa joked of her son being included last month on Live With Kelly and Ryan. 

“First of all, it’s funny, I forget that they look alike until I see photos of them like that,” she added of the publication’s comparison between Michael and his father. “Michael Conseulos, I always considered you just a handsome lovely fellow. Conscious, hard-working, diligent, respectful,” Ripa continued in a direct address to her son. “I had no idea you were considered ‘sexy.’ I always found his father to be sexy.”