Next time you find yourself in your local Barnes & Noble, pay extra close attention to the romance section — you might find Mark Consuelos on a book cover! During this morning’s episode of Live with Kelly and Mark, Kelly Ripa exposed her husband for one particular gig he took on early in his career.
The longtime host of the hit morning talk show surprised her husband/co-host on-air with a piece of memorabilia they had been in search of for what sounded like a long time.
“Remember when I was cleaning out my closet? Remember when I was telling you that I was just cleaning out the jeans and the sweaters and the things that I am convinced will one day fit again but clearly will never fit again?” she asked, before revealing, “I found when you were a model on a romance novel — the book cover.”
On the pastel-painted cover for Bronwyn Williams’ novel Halfway Home, Consuelos — who was 24 at the time that he took the job — is showing off his abs (and a mullet) as he dramatically dips a partially-nude blonde woman.
“They had a photo shoot and they had a model there. They ended up painting it back then — I don’t know how they do that. But they gave me long hair. They gave me a mullet,” he recalled of the “pre-photoshop” technique.
Consuelos added, “That poor girl. She had to sit there all day. That was the shot … She was very nice.”
While Ripa confessed to reading the book “back in the day,” she said hasn’t read it since.
“I think it’s like a sex book. [A] steamy sex book … Chapter four is six pages in so this is a sex book, to be clear,” she said as she opened it up for proof, to which the Riverdale alum joked, “Chapter one: third base.”
Live with Kelly and Mark airs on weekdays at 9/8c on ABC.
