“‘We Didn’t See This Coming’ — Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos Drop Emotional Bombshell About Son Joaquin on Live TV, Leaving Fans in Tears” The morning started like any other episode of Live, until Kelly Ripa’s voice cracked mid-sentence.

Beside her, Mark Consuelos smiled nervously as the couple revealed a deeply personal change involving their youngest son, Joaquin. The studio fell silent — then erupted in gasps as the truth sank in. For longtime fans, it was a rare glimpse behind the laughter: a moment of raw family emotion that showed even TV’s most unshakable duo still wrestles with love, distance, and the bittersweet ache of watching their child grow up.

Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos are one step closer to becoming empty nesters.

On the Monday, October 6, episode of Live With Kelly and Mark, Ripa shared that she and the couple’s 22-year-old son, Joaquin, enjoyed a mother-son dinner date over the weekend, their first in what Ripa said had been “15 years.”

Their dinner discussion centered around “the eternal question of where to live,” Ripa said. “He’s having, like, real, adult conversations, now that he’s graduated. We talked about a lot.”

Consuelos went on to quip, “I like the fact that he’s thinking about living somewhere else other than our house.”

Something Ripa said comes as a “shock” is that Joaquin “doesn’t like living with us either.” She added, “He’s like, ‘After four years of living on my own, I need to get away from you two.’ And so, we were talking about that, pros and cons of where he’s considering.”

According to Consuelos, Joaquin is considering making Los Angeles or New York City his home base. (Joaquin is the youngest of the couple’s three children, including Michael, 28, and Lola, 24.)

Joaquin graduated from the University of Michigan’s School of Drama earlier this year. On the May 5 episode of Live, Ripa joked that her “favorite part” of the graduation weekend was his special student athlete graduation ceremony, mainly because it only ran an hour long. (Joaquin competed on the university’s wrestling team.)

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“They had a procession in with this orchestral music,” Ripa stated. “It was like going to the Olympics. It was so exciting.”

Michael and Lola also traveled to Michigan for their younger brother’s academic achievement. However, Ripa said the entire family was exhausted by the time Joaquin’s graduation activities came to an end.

“If you can tell in this photo, we’re all just going through the motions at this point,” Ripa joked while holding up a family photo of herself, Consuelos, and all three kids. “Here we are. Everybody’s sort of like, ‘OK, take the picture. Take the picture so we have a photo of Michael in one of the graduation photos.’”

On Monday’s episode of Live, Ripa said she and Joaquin ran into the show’s longtime executive producer, Michael Gelman, at dinner over the weekend. Looking to “big shot him,” Ripa asked to secretly grab the check for his and his wife’s meal with a group of friends. She later discovered that Gelman had done the same for her.
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“I texted him, and I was like, ‘Are you crazy? I wanted to pick up your check.’ And he goes, ‘We got the better deal. You had to pay for four people,’” she told viewers before joking, “And I was like, ‘I was eating with Joaquin, so you also paid for four people.’”