Kelly Ripa and husband Mark Consuelos navigated a few technical interruptions during the Tuesday, February 18, episode of Live With Kelly and Mark. However, the beloved couple was left stunned when an audience member’s cell phone ringer went off in the middle of the live taping.
Before the phone call of shame occurred, Mark’s earpiece was giving him trouble as feedback played into his ear.
“What’s that noise? Is that my mic?” the Riverdale actor, 53, asked a member of the production team, who confirmed that his feed was outsourcing the audio.
While dealing with the mishap, Kelly, 54, babbled about current events and eventually landed into a conversation about playing hooky at school as kids. In the middle of Mark admitting that he forged an absence note from his parents, a loud cell phone ringer went off, leading Mark to express a shocked look on his face.
“This show has hit the skids!” Kelly said while smiling with defeat to the camera. “Tell your mom we’ll call her back! ‘I just saw you on TV!’ That’s how that conversation was about to go!”
Mark chimed in, “Who knows. I was telling a story, but I don’t care!”
The moment got even more wild behind the scenes when Kelly walked up to the audience member during a commercial break and asked who called her.
“A scammer,” the woman said, leading Kelly to joke that she should give them her credit card and social security numbers.
The official Live With Kelly and Mark account shared a clip of the moment via Instagram, leading fans to laugh about the unscripted mishap in the comments section.
“That’s funny. I thought it was Mark’s mom calling in,” a fan wrote alongside a laughing emoji.
This wasn’t the first time a phone went off during the daytime talk show. In fact, Kelly called out an audience member during a June 2023 episode after their phone call went off and distracted the cohosts.
“Don’t look to her, you know it’s yours. I know whose it is. I’ve done this in church,” Kelly cheekily said to the attendee.
However, the longtime TV host lightened the mood when she shared that her cell phone once went off in church – and her ringtone was Britney Spears’ iconic “It’s Britney, bitch” intro on the song “Gimme More.”
“That went off in church and I sat there like this,” Kelly said, while looking around the studio with a dumbfounded expression. “Remember when I was like, ‘Who in the world? Who would do that in the middle of church? What monsters.’ And it just kept ringing — it was [executive producer Michael] Gelman, P.S. — ringing, ringing, ringing.”
The unplanned hiccups on the show are what bring the audience and viewers back for more, as it offers a sense of normalcy to the show. In fact, Live With Kelly and Mark was crowned the most-watched syndicated talk show for almost two years.
“It’s not some giant mystery: Kelly and Mark get along as coworkers because their marriage is so solid,” a source close to the couple exclusively told Closer in December 2024. “Any of the initial skepticism around bringing Mark into the cohost role alongside Kelly has pretty much evaporated, and despite all the eulogies you hear about broadcast television these days, Live is still a highly profitable enterprise and Kelly’s fans think of her and Mark as members of their extended family.”
