Kelly Ripa Says She Wants to Go Back to College Weeks Ahead of Son Joaquin’s Graduation

Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’ youngest son, Joaquin Consuelos, is about to graduate from college, but the talk show hosts admitted they aren’t ready to let go of his college days just yet. The doting mom confessed that his impending graduation made her realize she would like to go back to school at some point in her life during an episode of Live With Kelly and Mark.

“We keep begging him to go to grad school,” Kelly, 54, said about Joaquin, 22, who will be graduating from the University of Michigan in a few weeks.

“You know what you should do? Now that he’s going to be out, you should go to school and he won’t be weirded out by his mom being in class,” Mark, 54, suggested to his wife.

“My whole thing is I want to go to college, I want to go to a four-year university, and I want to get my degree in something. What? I don’t know,” Kelly replied.

“I should go into broadcast — that’s an easy A. I’ll take an easy A. I’ll go into communications!” she quipped.

Kelly previously attended Camden County Community College in New Jersey but dropped out to pursue acting. Her career has come a long way, as she is now one of the most recognizable talk show hosts on TV and has been a part of the Live franchise since 2001.

As for her hopes for one day returning to college, Kelly said that she would actually not study broadcasting.

“Maybe psychology, maybe I’d take a writing class,” the All My Children alum said. “I’ll teach reverse psychology. I’ll be an adjunct professor.”

“We have a graduation coming up at the end of the … theoretically, a graduation!” Mark added.

Kelly and Mark said that they are “not ready to leave Ann Arbor yet” and joked that their “newborn baby is graduating” from college.
The couple, who also share kids Michael, 27, and Lola, 23, said that they recently went to visit Joaquin at school.

“We spent the weekend with him. We got to spend time with him and his siblings,” Kelly said. “He was in a production of A Few Good Men at the University of Michigan this weekend which was extraordinary.”

“Extraordinary. And it was senior night for the wrestling team. We had a tale of two completely different experiences,” Kelly continued. “We were in the theater and then I did a quick change in the car out of my theater clothes into my wrestling mom clothes.”

When Joaquin first started college, Kelly reflected on the emotions she felt while dropping him off for his freshman year in September 2021.

“We dropped him off at school and we gave him a hug — it was actually brutally painful. And I said, ‘I did not realize that 18 years would go so fast.’ And he didn’t say anything, he was just giving me a hug. But he turned to walk away and I said, ‘Wait, Joaquin, one more!’ And he kept walking,” she recalled on Live while choking back tears at the time. “And I knew that it was happening to him too, the emotion.”