Kelly Ripa Fires Back at Bachelorette Star Jenn Tran's Quip About Meeting Mark Consuelos: "Are You Acting on Your Show?"
Every rose has its thorn, and Bachelorette star Jenn Tran jabbed one into her latest interview on "Live With Kelly and Mark". Tran appeared on the show to promote her groundbreaking role as the first Asian woman to lead a season of the popular ABC dating show. Kelly Ripa, ever curious, playfully asked Tran why she didn't seek love among her fellow physician assistant students—or "at church," as Ripa's husband and cohost Mark Consuelos jokingly added.
"You're drop-dead gorgeous. You could meet anybody anywhere, at any time. Why, why, why?" Ripa asked. Tran, anticipating the question, cheekily responded, "I knew this was coming," before flipping the script: "I mean, is Hinge any better?"
As the interview progressed, Tran turned the tables on Ripa, questioning her relationship with Consuelos, which began on the set of the soap opera "All My Children". "I have a question: Where did you meet your husband?" Tran inquired.
Ripa replied, "I met my husband at work," to which Tran retorted, "On TV, no?" Ripa and Consuelos firmly pushed back against the insinuation.
"No, those are not the same. Those are not the same. We were both professionals. Are you acting on your show?" Ripa said, raising her hands in the air as the audience lightly gasped. "I didn't marry Mateo Santos, I married Mark Consuelos."
A source close to the situation says that Ripa and Tran were playfully ribbing each other, and that the interview was well received on both ends.
In February, Ripa and Consuelos discussed having to hide their 1996 marriage from colleagues on the TV show, until Wendy Williams exposed their secret nuptials on her former radio program.
"We'd eloped. It'd been a few months at that point, we'd been married for three months, nobody at [All My Children] knew we were even dating, much less married to each other. We're brushing our teeth and we've got Wendy Williams' radio show on. We're listening, and she's like, 'I've got celebrity dish,'" Ripa recalled. "The celebrities, I guess they had a broad use of the term back then, was the fact that two soap stars from "All My Children", Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos...eloped in Las Vegas. There was this eyewitness that worked in the Clark County courthouse that said we eloped, and the news broke, and we had to tell everybody we were married."
Ripa and Consuelos later returned to Las Vegas for a special round of episodes and even facilitated the marriage of a young couple at the same church where they tied the knot nearly 30 years ago.
"Live With Kelly and Mark" airs weekdays in syndication. Check your local listings for showtimes in your area. Watch Ripa and Tran's conversation in the video above.