Kelly Ripa and Ryan Seacrest have been recording their show, Live with Kelly and Ryan, remotely since ABC ordered all employees to stay home. We heard last week that keeping up all his obligations from his kitchen almost got the better of Ryan. Kelly has also suggested how difficult the new normal has been for her, explaining that her emotions are running high, exacerbated by missing her parents and feeling touch deprived from her kids. Her comments were slightly relatable as we all adjusted to lockdown living. But over the holiday, we learned a new twist to Kelly’s story, she’s not home at all. Kelly and her family have been quarantining in the Caribbean the whole time. According to Kelly, they had no choice. ORLY?
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos have been social distancing with their kids in the Caribbean amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The couple — who share daughter Lola, 18 and sons Michael, 22, and Joaquin, 17 — were on a trip together with their children when ABC instructed them to shelter in place, a source tells PEOPLE.
“The family was on a trip in the Caribbean when told to shelter in place and decided to stay put,” the source says.
Ripa discussed their decision during a virtual townhall on Thursday with ABC employees moderated by Sandy Kenyon.
“We had planned a trip for our family, and it was supposed to be our entire family of course,” said Ripa, according to a source at the town hall. “And we arrive and three days later, the entire world changed, really. I mean, everything shut down; the government shut down; our country shut down. I hate to use the word stuck, but we were. We decided to stay where we were.”
Ripa added that what was “distressing” was that both her and Consuelos’ parents were supposed to join them a week later.
“Lucky for us, we had our three children,” she added. “And then, you know, it was supposed to be a two-week trip and we wound up going right back to work. Ryan and I both decided it was better to do the show, because we just felt like in with everything that was going on in the world that perhaps, some normalcy of just doing what we normally do, even though it was like in very unusual circumstances, would be the best thing for us. “
I have questions. Kelly said that they were on a planned, two-week family vacation when the US shut down. As of March 11, Live had started filming without an audience in New York. March 23rd was the first show the duo filmed from their “homes.” Even if we give her the benefit of the doubt, that she was ‘stuck’ in her vacation home when lockdown occurred, they family chose to travel to a foreign destination while the country was succumbing to a global pandemic. And that was after we’d all seen/heard the mass devastation it had caused China and Italy. So this was, at best, a very bad decision. But factor in that all three of Kelly’s kids are in school: Lola and Michael in college and Joaquin in high school. Spring Break is only a week-long and rarely do colleges and high-school spring breaks overlap so, how were they planning a two-week vacation in the middle of March? Michael graduated from NYU last Thursday, something Kelly proudly noted, so he was going to blow off a week of classes in his final semester just to hang with Mom and Dad? If people took precautions, were cleared to travel, and quarantined themselves for the required two weeks, it might be ok to quarantine in paradise. However Kelly is not being upfront about it. She’s making it sound like the pandemic snuck up on them.
This does give more context as to why Kelly was so emotional about missing her folks. Especially since she almost endangered their lives by inviting them.
Interesting that the only vacation photos Kelly has posted are throwbacks to ‘better’ vacations from years past when she is, in fact, on vacation now.
Photo credit: YouTube, Instagram, WENN and Avalon.Red
I wouldn’t want to be locked down in the caribbean or anyplace else other than my home. My guess is she thought why not? The lockdown won’t last more than a couple or a few weeks, and ABC will pay the freight for our luxury vacation. But I bet she’s sorry now. I think this happened to a lot of NY’ers, in one way or the other. Even something as simple as; hey let’s quarantine together, it’ll only be a couple of weeks.
I travel domestically in the US nearly every week for my job. The first week of March there was a huge expo in LA – natural expo west. It started on 3/3. As of 3/1 it wasn’t cancelled. My company still sent me to LA. They cancelled the show the day before. Nobody in America thought it was what it was until it was.
Many did know what it was. I’m not a doctor or a scientist, but when I had a minor cough on February 26th, I stayed home because I knew the symptoms of the virus and didn’t want to take a chance I would infect anyone – including my colleagues. Unfortunately, the government and a lot of businesses did not take it seriously until we weren’t in a position to incrementally limit public gatherings, and we had to do a full lockdown. I also live in DC and rely on public transportation, so maybe I’m just more aware of things like this since the metro trains and buses are probably hotbeds of contamination.
If they were shooting without an audience prior to the trip, why would she still travel and invite her elderly parents to travel too? I mean I personally wouldn’t.
Lots of the rich nyc folks left the city for their country/beach homes which is more understandable than going to foreign country.
I mentioned below that major companies where telling their employees to cancel their work trips if they weren’t necessary in early to mid March and then all hell broke loose so while hindsight is 20/20 I still think knowing that they weren’t asking ppl to travel to come to her place of business, why would she think it’s ok to travel for leisure when things were serious enough not to have an audience. Weird.
Um, no. My teenager had a flu at the end of February and I didn’t take her to the pediatrician because I didn’t want us exposed to the corona virus at the waiting room at her doctor. (Could be ironic if that “flu” was in fact Covid, but we haven’t gotten any antibodies tests.) The next week was when the woman at the CDC told America that it “wasn’t a matter of IF but a matter of when.” That was the week that I stocked up on big bottles of hand sanitizer, toilet paper and zinc lozenges.
The last week of February.
A lot of Americans knew and a lot of experts knew. Our leaders didn’t tell us. Look up the Red Dawn email chain.
I would hate to be anywhere but in my home, also. She probably could have returned if she wanted to, but a lot of New Yorkers fled the city. The New York Times has several stories about this. New York City is not the safest place to be.
I would love to be quarantining in the Caribbean.
I see nothing wrong with the vacation timeline.
In March, barely anyone cared about China and Italy.
The UK had a huge Commonwealth ceremony and other large events.
Third week of February we cancelled all visitors to our home on the Atlantic coast, a month of family and they didn’t want to travel also, either by car or fly. None of us are doctors of medicine and all ages and all agreed it was too dicey.
What bothers me about Ripa is the dishonesty about their location initially even though I expect her to lie about many things in order to keep up the squeaky clean America’s sweetheart image.
Yeah – I am not going to judge. I went on vacation the first week of March. It was permitted under the government guidance and my firm’s guidance, and at that point, there really were very few cases and I would not have been refunded my vacation costs on insurance if I chose not to travel (not something she has to worry about but was a concern for me).
I’m not going to judge either. We were still going to hockey tournaments in February and March with the “wash your hands frequently/use hand sanitizer” instructions being the most serious warnings given. My daughter & I flew back and forth between NYC & Buffalo for the state hockey championships the first weekend in March. At that point, there were less than a dozen publicly identified cases in NYC and none in Western NYS.
My daughter’s private school in NYC was open until March 10. Almost all of the NYC private schools were scheduled to close for Spring Break at the end of the day on Friday, March 13. Most families cancelled their vacations and went to their country house (if they have one) as soon as the schools closed, but not all. At least one of my daughter’s classmates is still in the Caribbean, having gone for Spring Break and gotten stuck there. We were not planning to travel for spring break and don’t have a country house, so we are in our NYC apartment. My daughter’s best friend has been living with her grandfather in Connecticut since school closed.
Ripa’s youngest kid is in a NYC private school (I don’t know which one, and if I did, I wouldn’t say). Their vacation schedule would have been the same as most families at our school – they would have left NY around March 13/14/15 with plans to return March 26/7ish. That was when everything in NYC shut down and when travel plans were upended.
If she wanted to come back, they could hire a private plane.
That isn’t necessarily true. The pilot could leave but may not be able to get back to his/her country after leaving. We were on our boat as live aboards in the Bahamas when it shut down suddenly and met owners of a resort that their pilot was also the resort manager. They are still stuck there until the Bahamas opens up so that he can fly them back to the US and then return to work in the Bahamas.
It sounds like she did what a lot of rich people in NY did which was flee the city once they saw what was going on. They probably didn’t anticipate being there this long. I wonder why tell us this now? I’m wondering if there was a story about to come out about it and she wanted to get ahead of it???
I didnt see your comment, but this is what I also wrote above. My brother left NY and is staying with my mom in NJ. It makes a lot of sense to leave if you are able to.
OK, but NYC was a hot spot during a lot of the pandemic. People were trying to leave. If I was on a trip somewhere else before all of this went down I probably would stay there too rather than go home to NYC.
Things changed very quickly in March. Nobody–not one person I knew–was worried about COVID-19 the week before spring break, other than haha funny memes about washing your hands.
No shade on them from me.
Not sure what the big deal is? NYC is/has been a mess and I know plenty of New Yorkers who left the city.
I think the big deal is that she’s trying to suggest that they went on vacation and got stuck when it seems way more likely given the timing that they decided to shelter elsewhere. It doesn’t seem like anyone cares that they fled NY, so why not just tell the truth? And why not say from the beginning where they were holed up?
I think this is BS coming from her. I’m not mad about them staying in the Caribbean if they have the means to do so but to pretend it was not a choice they made is just posturing so there is no backlash. My husband and I are both registered nurses in the DC area; the writing was on the wall around that time, even if nobody wanted to pay attention to it. A week before spring break, he was frantically coming up with a way to move courses online with other administration in case they were not coming back to regular classes (he also teaches at The George Washington University). This was also around the time that at a HOSPITAL, they were struggling to provide me with the proper PPE to take care of patients because the supply chain for masks and respirators was decimated from people panicking.
Both her older kids go to nyu and spring break there was 3/16 to 3/22, classes actually went remote the week prior if I recall correctly, but then they told the students while they were on spring break that the rest of spring was also remote, and to come back and pack up their dorms. It was a hot mess. Lol. I don’t know where the youngest goes to school it’s probably a private school. But the mayor announced at like 5pm on Sunday 3/15 that all nyc schools would be remote. Again, a hot mess.
But yea read the room Ripa this was not the time to be going on a beach vacation, most ppl I know who work in senior leadership in major companies were being told as early as Feb that this was going to be major and that they should cancel all work related trips. I can’t imagine someone working in ‘News’ wouldn’t have a bit more info that us plebs but still went on this trip. Yikes.
I did think it was weird that she was saying she was resorting to wearing her daughter’s clothes but now it makes sense.
She’s pulling a Cavallari but at least isn’t posting current pics? Ha. I wonder where in the Caribbean they are? Hopefully her and Marc don’t succumb to the same fate as Jay and Kristin after their quarantine vacation.
A lot of vacation destinations do not have the infrastructure like a hospital with enough beds and resources to support not only the local population but also tourists, it’s so irresponsible that she went on this trip. Her statement makes it sound like it’s pity party for herself….actions have consequences. Deal with them.
Did she acknowledge this on her show since it came out where she is?
My family and I left for Punta Cana on March 7th, and came back the 14th. NO ONE was talking seriously about canceling anything until the middle of that week, and by then we were grateful to have seats on the flight we did. The world really did change and go from “watching and seeing” to total “shitshow” in an instant. Granted, I do live in Iowa, so certainly not a hotspot, then or now.
I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt.
I disagree with that timing. My son was scheduled to fly home on 3/5 and we were very concerned that his flight was going to be cancelled – we were looking into car rentals just in case. My colleague’s husband was scheduled to fly in on 3/4 (from the UK) and they were already investigating other means of getting him back as well, including private charters. They both flew in without a problem, but people were already wearing masks on the flights and there was already concern about cancelled flights and what the government might do. So while the cancellations did not end up happening, the discussion that it might happen was absolutely occuring. So I don’t think she flew out from NYC thinking she was going on vacation – I think they decided to shelter elsewhere, which is fine, but for goodness sake own it.
@ Nicole — I’m with you on this one. We flew to Honduras March 12 — there was a lot of panic in Europe and folks trying to get kids home from studying abroad etc. but “at that time” the guidance was kind of all over the place and the big deal was flights in/out of Europe. The Caribbean, South/Central America regions were untouched and there were no recommendations.
I work with a Doc that was still planning to take his family to Italy for spring break around the same time we left. They didn’t go, but not because of a personal decision, they couldn’t fly in.
We ended up spending an extra week in Honduras before they opened the airports for foreign nationals to LEAVE. So I can sorta believe they initially ‘got stuck’ there, but staying was a choice and one I would likely have made if I had the resources to stay as well.
Are you kidding? We were on Spring Break the week of the 10th and I know so many families that were debating whether to go on cruises / Disney/ ski resorts because of this. Most of the people I know changed their plans if they could. I swear, there are alternate realities going on.
On 3/14 I was on Maui with my boyfriend when we decided to leave 10 days early, skip visiting mom in NJ for a month, and return to northern Italy, where we live. We arrived to Maui on 2/9 after some time in NJ and at that time there were a few cases in Italy and no one was really talking about Coronavirus in the US. On 3/13 we called the Italian consulate in San Francisco to see what the Italian government’s recommendations would be. We were told to get back to Italy ASAP because we could be stuck in the US for “a long time”. We took their advice seriously knowing that we could not afford a long hospital stay in a US hospital (we both had medical insurance that capped at $50,000). We purchased new one way tickets back to Italy online because no one at United Airlines and British Airways was answering their phones. We were on a plane the next day. We were the only ones at Kahului airport wearing masks and boy did we get some crazy looks. Traveling through Canada, Austria, and then down through Italy by train we saw more and more masks, gel, and social distancing. Three planes and three trains later (33 hours total) we were home. Although we were basically In the world’s biggest Coronavirus hotspot we felt safer inside our home, close to friends and family, in a country, that at that point, was taking the situation seriously and was hopefully getting over the worst of it.
New Yorker here. Can’t stand Kelly or Ryan and most of the time I ignore both but THIS coupled with the story in the New York Times really pisses me off. New Yorkers (mainly Manhattanites) fleeing the city was to escape lockdown AND the virus. Kelly and family knew what they were doing. It’s only the more affluent citizens who seem to think their money and status can’t possibly make them asymptomatic carriers — if they’re not already infected. I have family in Maryland I dearly miss but I’m not going anywhere until I know I can get tested and/or that I can a test to confirm that I’m not a carrier. And I happen to also live in Manhattan.
At the VERY LEAST that comes out of this pandemic is that people will start to see the stark contrast and wide disparity between the social and economic situations among various communities, especially when it comes to rate of infections and access to healthcare. How many people from the Bronx, Queens (hardest hit), Brooklyn, and Staten Island could have “escaped” New York if they wanted to? How many people of color, how many immigrants have been infected versus white, affluent? How many of them have ADEQUATE health care coverage to not only fight the virus but deal with the aftermath?
So no, the last thing I want to see is Kelly Ripa crying crocodile tears on TV for first responders or infected New Yorkers. Whatever Caribbean country is housing this family, they can keep them.
We went to San Franciso on March 13, and ended up coming back a few days into our planned week and a half vacation when the Bay Area went on lockdown. We are daily NYT readers, and we still didn’t know much about how the virus spread, and what devastation it would cause in the U.S. To be fair, we few out for a doctor’s appointment, and we would not have gone if it were for pleasure, but a week or two before? I can picture it. In our lifetimes, we’ve never seen anything like this. There might have been warning signs, but if you’ve never lived through it, you can’t expect everyone to react with the same urgency. Ripa gets a pass from me,
I live in the southwest of France, near the coast, and many people fled Paris to come to our region just before the beginning of the lockdown. People were PISSED (I was as well). They left a RED ZONE (our zones are color coded) to come to a green one and I’m pretty sure they did not even quarantine for two weeks when they arrived. They just rented villas on the beach and decided to treat it like a vacation. Now, I’m most definitely not condoning that, far from it, but part of the backlash was shown through their cars being vandalized…we were lucky to stay in the green because I’m pretty sure people fleeing a hotspot for another zone is not a good way to contain the virus…Also , I’m sorry but the class warfare was sooo glaring during the lockdown (in case some people had a blind spot) but…it’s a privilege to be able to self-isolate. I’m even more puzzled when the restlessness comes from people who live in mansions with pools and whatnot. Yeah it sucks, but you could be in a tiny apartment with people crammed inside. The people who are in this situation were given no other option.
I tend to give her a pass, too, although I do somewhat side eye the kids missing school for a family trip. I think many, many people were in denial about the seriousness of what was about to hit us and tried to go about their normal lives, planned travel included, for as long as possible. I feel like it didn’t really feel real until the week the groceries ran out of toilet paper, which I think was the second week of March, at least here in Chicago.
Yeah, stuck they were not. My in-laws flew from Puerto Rico to Maine around April 7.