Kelly Ripa

Kelly Maria Ripa is an American actress and television talk show host. She is best known for her long-running role as a co-host of the syndicated morning talk show Live!, as well as her roles as Hayley Vaughan on the ABC soap opera All My Children and Faith Fairfield on the ABC sitcom Hope & Faith. In 2014, she was named one of the Most Powerful People in Media by The Hollywood Reporter.

Ripa was born on October 2, 1970, in Stratford, New Jersey, to Esther, a homemaker, and Joseph Ripa, a bus driver and labor union president who later served as county clerk for Camden County. Raised Catholic, Ripa has Italian and Irish ancestry. She attended Eastern Regional High School in Voorhees Township, New Jersey, where she was a cheerleader and performed in local theater productions. Encouraged by her drama teacher, she was discovered during a senior year production of The Ugly Duckling. She later studied psychology at Camden County College before moving to New York City to pursue acting.

Ripa made her national television debut in 1986 as a regular dancer on Dancin' On Air, which led into Dance Party USA. Her first major acting role came in 1990, when she was cast as Hayley Vaughan on All My Children. She played the character for twelve years until 2002, earning five Soap Opera Digest Awards and three Daytime Emmy nominations, and returned for two anniversary episodes in 2010. During this period, she also appeared in the 1996 feature film Marvin's Room and won a Best Actress Award at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival in 1999 for The Stand-In.

In November 2000, Ripa auditioned to replace Kathie Lee Gifford on Live! alongside host Regis Philbin. Officially joining as co-host in February 2001, her addition significantly increased the show's young-audience demographics. She co-hosted Live! with Philbin until his retirement in 2011, after which she continued as the head of the show. She subsequently co-hosted alongside Michael Strahan from 2012 to 2016, Ryan Seacrest from 2017 to 2023, and her husband Mark Consuelos starting in 2023.

In addition to daytime television, Ripa starred as Faith Fairfield on the ABC primetime sitcom Hope & Faith from 2003 to 2006. In 2007, Ripa and Consuelos founded the production company Milojo, named after their three children. Milojo has produced various projects, including the Tribeca Film Festival documentaries The Streak and Off the Rez, the Discovery Channel series Homemade Millionaire, a Funny or Die short film titled The Bensonhurst Spelling Bee, and the Oxygen docu-series Exhumed.

Ripa has received numerous honors, including multiple Daytime Emmy Awards for her hosting work on Live! and the Disney Parks Christmas Day Parade. She was inducted into the Broadcast Pioneers Hall of Fame in 2010, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2015, and was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2017. Ripa married her All My Children co-star Mark Consuelos in 1996, and the couple has three children.