Mark Consuelos wasn’t always a soap opera star and married to an uber-successful morning chat show host- in fact, when he married now very famous Kelly Ripa in Vegas in 1996, he was still living with and sleeping on the sofa of an All My Children co-star.
That was nearly two decades ago, though, and now both Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa are wildly successful and parents to three kids. But in a recent Vanity Fair profile, Ripa dishes on the days before appliance endorsements and her years co-hosting with talk show legend Regis Philbin- even admitting hubby Mark once stripped to pay the bills.
Ripa says that Consuelos didn’t mean to get into stripping, but his clothes just fell off . Okay, not really. But that totally would have been hot, right? What she really says is that he was struggling in college, and his good looks helped him on the road to success:
“A lot of hot guys in Hollywood have done that. He was straight out of college, and he went to Notre Dame and finished his degree at the University of South Florida. So, there he was in South Florida, he’s gorgeous, looking to break into show business, so he started off as a roadie to a group of these guys, and then they talked him into stripping.”
But despite Mark Consuelos’ old exotic-dancing ways, Ripa says the couple is raising their kids very strictly, and explains:
“We are kind of strict. We are a little bit old-school that way. There is only one computer in the entire house for the family to share. The computer is just for homework. They are allowed to TiVo but watch TV only on the weekends. TV during the week interferes with schoolwork. There is too much of that, ‘Let me hurry through, slop this out on the page so I can go watch some television.’”
Consuelas and Ripa’s kids are now 14, 10 and 9.
