Kelly Ripa
on the Gift
of Family
By Erika Janes
Photos By David M. Russell,
ABC Entertainment
My mother-in-law had a great tradition of making homemade meat and homemade cheese ravioli. We would spend all day doing it, like 12 hours, and they’d be gone in 12 minutes.
The Live with Kelly and Ryan star on a reimagined Christmas, the holiday tradition that gets her kids excited, and why she and Mark give each other "the gift of not giving each other anything."
elly Ripa is grateful for the little things. It’s October, and the full swing of the holiday season isn’t quite upon us yet, but the Live with Kelly and Ryan star is already looking ahead — and looking forward to a simple celebration. Speaking to SheKnows by phone from her home in New York, there’s a lot that’s normal right now for Ripa — balancing her work, her family, and media asks, for starters — but also a lot that’s not, because work is certainly different right now, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and we’re talking about the holiday season, which is going to look different, too.
Any other year, Ripa and her husband of 24 years, Mark Consuelos, would take a trip somewhere with their kids, Michael, 23, Lola, 19, and Joaquin, 17. This year, Consuelos will be traveling solo — home — on a two-week break from shooting Riverdale in Vancouver. Ripa hasn’t seen him IRL since August; thanks to Canada's strict
K
quarantine policy their usual back-and-forth visits have been impossible, and Ripa admits it’s been hard.
“It's just going to be a reunion, really, for us — the kids and me and Mark,” she says. “And it really will be a celebration. We miss him terribly.”
children would join me and this would be such a family event and everybody would love doing it... and I think the kids maybe twice made cookies with me and the rest of the time they could not be bothered,” she says. “So it’s really just something I do.” Another tradition that has fallen away over the past few years: the all-day pasta-making that used to happen when her in-laws visited. “My mother-in-law had a great tradition of making homemade meat and homemade cheese ravioli,” she recalls. “We would spend all day doing it, like 12 hours, and they’d be gone in 12 minutes.”
Ripa and Consuelos aren’t big on splashy, Instagram-worthy Christmas presents for each other, either. “We give each other the gift of not giving each other anything,” she says, although we feel compelled to note here that Consuelos doesn’t always play by the rules. “I got wise to the fact that, a few years back, Mark would all of a sudden surprise me with a box he’d whip out from under the tree,” she says, “and I’d be like, ‘Hang on a second. We were giving each other the gift of not giving each other anything!’” (For the record, the first year that surprise box contained a really fancy pair of pajamas.) Now, they skip the pretense and make donations to favorite charities in each other’s names: This Is About Humanity for Consuelos, and Win NYC for Ripa. “This is a gift that you can give that you feel great about,” she says. “I know it's not the most romantic but that’s definitely what we’ll do again this year.”
As for the kids, these days they’re “more excited about the sleeping-in-all-day aspect rather than getting up at 5:00 am to see if Santa came.” And what gets them out of bed, ultimately, is a breakfast recipe that came to the family courtesy of Ryan Seacrest’s mom, Connie Seacrest. “My kids wake up and all they want are sausage balls, which we nicknamed Ryan’s balls,” Ripa shares. “That’s what we have Christmas morning-slash-afternoon when they wake up. It's really very simple, and it's been very simple for a long time.”
So it’s back to — or a continuation of, really — the small pleasures that make the holiday special for the Ripa-Consuelos family. And Ripa has one more hope for the day — a hope that feels both small and huge at once. “I’m afraid to even put it out there, but I'm hoping to get to see my parents, even if it's in a drive-by capacity,” she says, adding that both her and Mark’s parents are older, and “we don’t take any chances with our parents.” So that’s on her COVID-times holiday wish list as well: making the two-hour drive to see her mom and dad through a car window.
“In a big way, this time and what everybody individually in their families has gone through, it has made us appreciate things on a way different level,” she says. “I used to get really, really upset about mundane nonsense that doesn't matter. Now I find myself just saying, if I just get to see my parents, that would be great. Because Mark and I have given up on meaningful face time with both sets of our parents — none of them know how to hold the phone.” She laughs, “I’m not sure what age it is where you just can’t figure out that you can’t see anybody and no one can see you.”
In lieu of face-to-face visits — whether in person or via technology — Ripa also treasures a holiday photo she snapped of her father-in-law, taken when her son Michael and nephew Alec were just toddlers. “He’s got one grandson on each arm, and it’s burned into my memory because it's just such a beautiful picture,” she says. “You can see the pride on his face.” And Ripa shares that every now and then, when their kids do something remarkable or kind, she catches that exact same look on Consuelos’ face. “I see the future in those moments.”
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Reimagining Traditions
The lack of travel — something so many of us can relate to — won’t be the only change. The family’s usual Christmas Eve tradition of attending an early mass (“we’re Catholic, so the holiday is really to celebrate the holiday and not about stuff,” Ripa says) and adjourning to an Italian restaurant for the Feast of the Seven Fishes will be reimagined, as well, replaced by a Zoom mass and dinner at home. “I will make the feast of the singular fish – the feast of the mollusk,” she says with a laugh. “I’m not a chef, but I can make a delicious linguine and clam.”
This sends Ripa down memory lane, of holidays past and cooking endeavors more arduous. Every year, Ripa makes her grandmother’s Spritz cookies, but admits it never quite turned into the picture-perfect family tradition she envisioned. “I used to labor under this belief that my
In fact, that sounds like so much of Christmas with little kids; the weeks of shopping and prepping, the late-night wrapping of presents and filling of stockings, only to have the tissue torn away in a flash. But Ripa insists that gift-giving has always been low-key in her family, even when the kids were little. Knowing that friends and relatives would be generous, she and Consuelos limited their kids to asking for one main gift, and filled their stockings with simple things — a toothbrush, Life Savers candy, all the stuff they had growing up. “We never went overboard,” she says.
Feel-Good Gifts
Simple Pleasures
Meaningful Moments
Saul Consuelos holds two of his grandsons.