Kelly Ripa says Mark Conseulos used to be ‘insanely jealous’ and pick fights

Remember how it was just announced that Ryan Seacrest was leaving Live with Kelly and Ryan? And remember the second part of that announcement was that Ryan would be replaced with Kelly’s husband Mark Consuelos? Yeah, me too.

So Kelly has a new podcast, because I guess she needs even more outlets to share her business. It’s called Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa. Guess who her first guest was? Malala. No, wait – sorry, I mean Kelly’s husband Mark Consuelos. The pair discussed their marriage, which is 26-years old now. They talked about going to counseling once they became empty nesters and how they’ve changed since they first married. One of the things that Kelly said changed is Mark’s insane jealousy. Apparently, Kelly couldn’t even smile at a 70-year-old man without setting Mark off when they were newlyweds. But her husband Marksplained how it’s all better now… and how it isn’t totally weird that Kelly has to bring him to work everywhere she goes.

Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are getting real about the ups and down in their 26-year marriage, including some of the hurdles they’ve had to overcome over the years.
The couple opened up about their romance on the premiere episode of Ripa’s new Sirius XM podcast Let’s Talk Off Camera with Kelly Ripa that dropped Wednesday, explaining that they pulled through some of the tough times in their relationship by addressing their issues together.
“It always gets better,” said Consuelos, 51. “If you communicate and talk it through, literally, there’s nothing that’s insurmountable.”
That doesn’t mean they’re not still aware of the bad times said Ripa, 52, recalling how they clashed in the past over Consuelos’ jealous behavior.
“My biggest complaint about you over the course of our marriage — and this is not recent, ’cause it definitely changed, and I don’t know if I changed or if you changed or if it was some combination of change — but you used to be insanely jealous,” said Ripa. “And that was a hard pill to swallow. It’s very hard being married to somebody who is jealous. … It’s unattractive.”
She went on to note that Consuelos often got jealous over “a perception of a scenario” that wasn’t accurate. As an example, she told a story that happened early on after the All My Children lovebirds secretly eloped in 1996, when a waiter at a restaurant in Boston sweetly called her a “princess” in Italian.
“The waiter was a very cute old man. He was definitely in his 70s, if not 80s,” Ripa remembered. “I thought it was so cute that this old man called me a princess. And I looked at him and I gave him my order in a very smiley way. And he walked away and you picked a horrible fight with me.”
Consuelos — who is set to join his wife as co-host on Live next month, replacing Ryan Seacrest — confirmed the story, telling Ripa, “I got upset.”
“Look, at age 25, I was pretty insane. But that jealousy thing definitely followed me for a while,” he said. “I’m not jealous anymore. … It’s a character flaw. It’s ugly. And as ugly as it feels to the person who is on the receiving end of it, it’s such an ugly feeling inside. If this is any consolation, you know you’re being crazy. The jealous person knows that this is wrong and it’s ugly but they can’t help it.”
Asked “what changed,” Consuelos said it was all about self-growth. “I wanted to do some work on myself,” he said. “That was one of the major things that I needed to work on, because it was getting in the way.”

[From People]

I don’t know Kelly or Mark, so I assume if they say this is no longer an issue, it isn’t. I appreciate Mark owned it as an ugly flaw. It does make one wonder why this came up in the first place. Hey, you don’t do this anymore, but I thought the world should know how you were a complete @$$hole and here is a very specific example. That sounds like a lot more than ‘learn from our mistakes.’ And, as I not so subtly alluded to, makes this whole co-hosting thing look suspect. They also went into detail about sex-timing while Mark was filming Riverdale during Covid. It was a closed set so he couldn’t come home for 10 months. They had what Kelly referred to as “sexual rituals” over Facetime. And later in the podcast Mark, who called himself a “lifer” when it comes to marriage, said the only real deal-breaker was if Kelly just refused to have sex with him anymore. He did say if she had a medical condition that disabled her, that was different. So that’s good. But I used to think their constant referring to their sex life was performative. If there is “insane jealous” at play, though, it starts to feel like there’s some kind of dominance involved. Especially since we know Mark believes only one person in the relationship is allowed to wear the pants – and it’s him.

I do like, though, that Kelly and Mark are talking about getting marriage counseling as empty nesters. I think people always see expiration dates for therapy and there are none. They have been married a long time and I appreciate they talk about working on their relationship. Maybe just not so many details?

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