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Don’t let their smooth skin and boundless energy fool you: Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are old enough to have three kids in their 20s. Married since 1996 after meeting on the set of All My Children, the Live With Kelly and Mark hosts didn’t plan to start a family so early (they were both 26 when their eldest was born), but they’re glad they did. “We are so thrilled we did it young because now I’m like, ‘Imagine if our kids were [little] now?’” Ripa, 55, has said. For his part, Consuelos once told Ripa on her podcast, Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa, that he wouldn’t remarry in the (tragic!) event they split because he’s done having children. “I don’t want more kids. I’ll be an older dad,” he said. When Ripa responded that plenty of guys his age add to their brood, he replied, “[T]hose poor bastards have no idea, because what happens next? You’re talking about hip replacements, knee replacements, and they’re gonna be that dad, not there’s anything wrong with that dad,” he said. “But I did it early. I didn’t plan it that way. It just happened. And we got really lucky that’s what we did when we did it.” Keep reading to learn more about Ripa and Consuelos’s children, what they’re up to now and how they’re each following in their famous parents’ footsteps. 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade’s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox 🎬 How many biological kids do Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos have? Ripa and Consuelos share three biological children: their sons Michael Joseph Consuelos (born June 1997) and Joaquin Antonio Consuelos (born February 2003), and their daughter, Lola Grace Consuelos (born June 2001). Ripa, a morning-show mainstay since 2001 (when she first co-hosted Live alongside Regis Philbin), has been open over the years about her struggle to achieve work-life balance. “I always feel like a failure,” she said in 2015, when her kids were 18, 14 and 12. “I don’t know if I’ll ever find balance. It’s human nature. You’re always thinking about what you’re doing or not doing at that time. And sometimes one child needs more attention than the other and that’s just a part of life.” When did Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelous have their first child? The daytime dynamos welcomed their first child, their son Michael, on June 2, 1997. At the time, Ripa and Consuelos were both 26 years old. (They were born just a few months apart — Ripa in October 1970 and Consuelos in March 1971.) Related: Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’ Journey From Co-Workers to Lovers and Back Who are Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’s kids? Michael (b. June 2, 1997) Oops! We’re unable to load this content right now. View directly on Instagram The eldest of Kelly and Mark’s three children, Michael graduated from New York University, where he studied film, in 2020. “I focused mainly on production and writing, but I also took acting classes,” he told Smashing Interviews magazine. “…I’ve always really enjoyed telling stories and being in stories.” While in college, he worked as a production assistant on a few episodes of the ABC sitcom The Goldbergs. But his buzziest role to date was arguably in front of the camera on The CW’s Riverdale, in which he played a young version of his father’s character, Hiram Lodge, in two episodes (the first aired in 2018 and the second in 2021). He also appeared in the 2022 Lifetime movie Let’s Get Physical, which his parents co-produced alongside star Jenna Dewan. “I’ve learned a lot from both of my parents on the producing side and on the acting side,” he told Smashing Interviews. And, yes, he recognizes that his upbringing was a bit, shall we say, unusual. “I grew up basically on Live,” he said. “Even before that, I would go to All My Children, and I would sit in the makeup chair with my mom, and I’d watch her get her makeup done. I remember there was one story. I can’t remember the episode, but I think my dad’s character saves my mom from a burning building or something. I went into school, and I said, ‘My dad rescued my mom from a fire last night.’” “… I just always accepted what they did,” he continued. “I knew that it wasn’t particularly normal compared to most. It was just something I lived with.” These days, when he’s not auditioning, Michael keeps busy producing and writing — and not just screenplays, but also novels (he calls Stephen King his “literary idol”). “[I]n every aspect of my life now, I am helping stories be told, and that is the only thing I could ever see myself doing,” he said. “It’s what I really enjoy.” Lola (b. June 16, 2001) The couple’s only daughter, Lola attended NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, where she studied music and production. In 2022 (a year before she graduated), she released her debut single “Paranoia Silverlining.” “I’m at this point in my life where I really just want to get the ball rolling,” she told People at the time. “I just turned 21. I have a lot of material to write about. As I’ve gotten older, I have a lot more life experience in terms of relationships and friendships.” She followed that song up with a track called “Divine Timing” in 2023 and “The Watcher” in 2024, and is set to release her first EP, Sorry, it’s all about me, this year. (The first single off that record, “Lola,” dropped on Oct. 17.) Oops! We’re unable to load this content right now. View directly on Instagram On the personal front, Lola has been dating fellow NYU grad Cassius Kidston since 2023. The couple lives in London, where he’s originally from and where Lola studied abroad while in college. “I love London. … New York’s always gonna be my home, but London just has a charm … It’s so beautiful,” she said on an episode of Ripa’s podcast, Let’s Talk Off Camera. No matter where the up-and-coming musician is living, though, she can always count on her parents for support and wisdom. Recounting the best advice she ever received from her mother, Lola shared, “Years ago, you were like, ‘I’m telling you, when you stop giving that fluster-ness attention, it will all fall into place,’” she said on Let’s Talk Off Camera. “And I stopped giving that thing in my head attention. And lo and behold, everything got into place.” Joaquin (b. Feb. 24, 2003) The youngest of the three Consuelos kids, Joaquin graduated from the University of Michigan, where he played for the wrestling team and studied theater, in 2025. Although he didn’t start out as an aspiring actor, he told the University of Michigan Athletic that his older brother inspired him to get into the family business. “[W]e would make short movies and stuff on our phones. That’s when I started any remote type of acting,” he said. Then one day, when Michael couldn’t make it to an audition, he encouraged his baby bro to go out for the role instead. “I didn’t get the part, but I thought that I could really do acting,” Joaquin shared. “I should actually look into doing this. That was the light bulb moment.” Oops! We’re unable to load this content right now. View directly on Instagram Sharing the story of their youngest son’s graduation on Live, Ripa said, “This one hit differently because it’s our last kid to graduate. So we just kept waiting for something bad to happen.” “We held our breath until he walked across the stage,” Consuelos added. And walk across the stage he did. Related: Kelly Ripa Says Mark Consuelos Used to Be ‘Insanely Jealous’ What disability does Kelly Ripa’s youngest son have? Ripa’s youngest son, Joaquin, has dyslexia and dysgraphia, both learning disabilities that affect reading, writing and language processing. “Mark and I were FaceTiming the other night … Mark got very emotional, and very choked up, because he said, ‘You know, I never thought he would be able to go to college,’” Ripa recalled on an episode of Live. “Because he was profoundly dyslexic and dysgraphic.” But, she continued, “through hard work, determination, [and] remediation,” her youngest was able to thrive despite his “misunderstood learning difference.” Are any of Kelly and Mark’s kids in the family business? All three of Ripa and Consuelos’s kids are pursuing careers in entertainment: Michael is an actor, writer and producer; Lola is a singer/songwriter; and Joaquin is an actor (as well as an athlete). Because her children grew up in the spotlight, Ripa has said, they have a lot of people invested in them as adults. “Our children are fully aware. They’ll meet people on the street that will come up to them and say, ‘I watched you grow up. It is such a pleasure to see you as an adult,’ ” Ripa told host Amanda Hirsch on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast. “When my kids were little, they had the opportunity to come on and do, like, little segments … and people got a glimpse into their lives. And then they grew up, and they move on, and they move out, and they move out of the country in some cases, and and people don’t get to regularly check in with them.” “And so I feel like, once in a while, it’s important to sort of let people in because I feel like they had a group experience,” she continued. “My kids had a group childhood. It was like they had lots of aunties, lots of uncles, lots of grandparents … It wasn’t just our parents and our siblings. They had, like, America and Canada raising them in some way.”
