Kelly Ripa shares scoop on her husband's past with Vanity Fair. (Dimitrios Kambouris/VF12/WireImage)
Ripa and Mark Consuelos married in 1996. (Dimitrios Kambouris/WireImage)Kelly Ripa: beloved perky morning show host, mom of three, and … wife of a male stripper? Well, ex-stripper actually.
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Though the National Enquirer reported years back that Ripa's husband since 1996, fellow former "All My Children" star Mark Consuelos had once worked as a male stripper, Ripa never confirmed the scoop, until now.
"A lot of hot guys in Hollywood have done that," the 41-year-old tells Vanity Fair. "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."
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The couple eloped 16 years ago, but it's not because Ripa's family had any problem with Consuelos … or his past.
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"No, my parents worship Mark. My husband is probably the most responsible, hard-working, diligent person I know. He is very smart and stable," she says in the June issue. "We eloped because his brother and sister had also just had weddings, everybody had just got married, our characters on "All My Children" were married to each other three different times already. We felt as if we had endured enough weddings."
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And while the two have spoken out against tabloid reports of infidelity and a rocky marriage and have demanded retractions, it's clear from this latest interview that Kelly can't get enough of her hot hubby … and admits she even still has an old calendar pinup of him from back in the day."He is so unbelievably gorgeous, with a Mexican father, Italian mother born in Spain and raised in Italy, and I will never give him up."
The search continues to find a replacement for Regis Philbin to serve as Ripa's new co-host on her daily morning talk show temporarily called "Live! With Kelly," but don't look to Consuelos to take the gig.
"No one would make me happier than Mark, but he values our marriage and he says that he doesn't see how we could stay married and both do that show," she shares. So who would she want instead? "If it could be anyone in the universe … Anderson Cooper."
Now if we find out Cooper has a past in stripping, that would be interesting.
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