Mark Consuelos is set to take over Ryan Seacrest’s vacated chair on Live with Kelly and Mark next Monday. In anticipation of this, they gave the couple the cover of People. It feels like a lot to me. The whole point of having Mark as the co-host, I thought, was because everyone loved seeing them work together. But People also loves putting Kelly and Mark on their cover so maybe they were just jonesing for another excuse. The article is all about how excited they are to work together and how “off the rails” the show will be with these two crazy kids living, loving and now working together. You know my thoughts – that’s too much togetherness. But Kelly said no. And even if it was, they’d find a way to get through it. Because that’s how they’ve stayed together all these years. When discussing their marriage, Kelly said the reason their marriage has endured is because they’ve never let a small thing become a big thing that drives them apart. She said they put their heads down, come together and work it through.

When Mark Consuelos pulls up that coveted chair beside Kelly Ripa as co-host of the newly titled Live With Kelly and Mark on April 17, it will be “a complete full circle moment” for the real-life married couple.

“To have Mark join me at that desk every day, it’s a dream come true,” Kelly, 52, tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story. “We’ve been so uniquely blessed.”

“I’m a very practical person, but there was something about him,” says Kelly of the moment in 1994 when the casting director for All My Children showed her a photo of Mark, then a budding 24-year-old actor up for a role opposite Kelly, already one of the soap’s breakout stars. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s my person. This is my husband. My future hubs.’ I just knew it.”

As fate would have it, Kelly’s intuition was spot on. The pair fell hard and fast while working on All My Children, and over 28 years, built a family — they share kids Michael, 25, Lola, 21, and Joaquin, 20 — and thriving individual careers.

For the power duo, teaming up on Live offers an ideal chance to hang out together after spending long stretches apart for work over the last decade.

“During the pandemic when Riverdale was shut down for about six months, it was the first time we had been together uninterrupted for like, five years,” says Kelly. “I prefer the togetherness. I really enjoy being around him — he’s great company, so funny, so smart, insightful, pragmatic and super level-headed. He doesn’t get rattled, and that’s very reassuring and comforting to be around.”

Of course, like any enduring married couple, they’ve had to work hard at growing their healthy partnership. “I don’t understand when people say, ‘We never fight.’ I go, ‘Oh, they’re in trouble,'” says Kelly, who eloped with Mark in Vegas in 1996.

“Many people we know have gone through a divorce and a separation and when you ask ‘Why did you guys wind up getting a divorce?’, it’s always the same answer: ‘I don’t really know.’ I feel like we could have over the years let something small turn into that and [instead] we just put our heads down, got together and said ‘Let’s work it out…'”

She adds: “Now we can work it out on camera!”

While they don’t intend to drag out all the dirty laundry (“We’re not going to be like ‘About that thing you said about my mother…'” she says), they’ve never been ones to hold back.

“We’re not afraid to go there,” she says. “We have the confidence in our marriage that no matter what we discuss, I don’t mind being the villain in the argument, nor does Mark. Neither one of us needs to be the hero.”

And given the already upbeat, playful tone of Live, Mark says, “If we think something is really going to be funny, then it can be magic.”

[From People]

Kelly lost me when she said, “To have Mark join me at that desk every day, it’s a dream come true.” When this was first announced, Kelly insisted she was against the idea and had to be talked into it. Although not an avid watcher of Live, having Mark on as a guest host was novel. It was almost a reality check for Kelly because he was her husband, and it brought that part of her even more into the studio. But they are both successful TV personalities and beautiful people – it worked. All this promo blitz has done is convince me this full-time co-host thing is going to be insufferable. If nothing else, marrieds think alike, so it will be like the same person interviewing each guest.

As for Kelly’s thoughts about sticking together, they’re good. I agree with working things out and not letting them blow up. That’s a two-way street, of course. It’s exhausting if only one person is doing the work every single time. But really – none of her friends had any idea why they got divorced? Good lord, I have friends who’ve been divorced over a decade who could still list every infraction – in order – as to what led to their divorce. I never know what to make of Kelly. She goes so deep on the details of her sex life and how important her family is to her but when she’s asked something poignant, she can’t give a cohesive answer. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t know or doesn’t want to give out advice but it’s okay to say that. Like I don’t know how The Professor and I have made it through all the sh*t life’s thrown at us, I truly don’t. All I know is that my breaths would be half as deep if he wasn’t by my side and that motivates me to work towards any solution that needs finding. But then again, no one is paying us millions to talk about our sex life every morning either.

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