Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest Admit They’re ‘Religious’ About Their Pre-Show ‘Live’ Routine

Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest began hosting Live With Kelly and Ryan together in 2017, and the pair opened up about their pre-show ritual while speaking to PEOPLE at an event at the Paley Center for Media in New York City on Wednesday, revealing that they never deviate from the routine they’ve developed.

“We’re almost religious about the way we conduct our morning routine,” Ripa shared at PaleyLive: An Evening with Kelly and Ryan.

“The short version is we don’t connect with each other until 60 seconds before we’re going on the air,” her co-host revealed. “I scream to her in the dressing room, ‘Morning! Hi, Ripa.’”

While they don’t physically see each other before the show each morning, Ripa shared that she and Seacrest “text each other all night long.”

Seacrest took over co-hosting duties after Michael Strahan left Live in 2017, and the American Idol host called his first day hosting with Ripa one of his “favorite moments.”

“When Kelly walked out my first day, I was backstage with butterflies and had never been announced being the co-host,” Seacrest said on Wednesday. “And I just — it was a new chapter for the show, but certainly for my life in New York City, and I’ll never forget that feeling. I’ll never forget the night before when we knew but couldn’t tell anybody I was coming.”

“We were literally vibrating and almost crying for several hours together,” Ripa put in. “It was scary and it was the closest we will ever get to being double agents, right? It was really nerve-wracking.”

Ripa praised her co-host’s “easygoing nature” and called him a “gifted storyteller,” adding that “everything Ryan does makes me laugh.”

“I think that Ryan makes us all better because he is so professional,” she said. “He really does keep it tight. It’s a tight show and he adds so much with that level of expectation that it has literally made the entire team rise up and want to say, ‘Oh, that’s right. People are watching this show.’”

Seacrest shared that he’s “happy to contribute.”

“I think, you know, working with Kelly and having [guests] come on, and maybe they’ve come on before, and seeing how excited they are to come back to the show because of what she’s been able to build there makes it really special,” he said. “The guests are happy and comfortable on our show. They’re not nervous. They’re not worried about anything. And that’s by design. And I think that she’s created that atmosphere and I like being part of that.”

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