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Kelly Ripa is already making plans for a funeral she intends to attend herself.
During the Oct. 7 episode of Live With Kelly and Mark, the talk show host and husband Mark Consuelos discussed a woman who organized her own funeral while still alive so she could experience the celebration. The conversation prompted Ripa to reveal how she would want her own version of the event to unfold.
Ripa turned to longtime Live producer Michael Gelman and told him, "I'll let you throw my funeral, but I've got some requests."
It's going to be a destination," she added. However, Consuelos will have one responsibility firmly taken off his hands: choosing what his wife wears.
"Am I in charge of getting you dressed?" he asked. "No! If Gelman is throwing my funeral, my stylist is getting me dressed," Ripa replied.
She reminded her husband that they had already established that he "should never get me dressed for anything," pointing to an unusual incident from years ago when he dressed her for a hospital visit after she passed out.
According to Ripa, Consuelos once put her in a green leotard, athletic pants and red high heels before taking her to the hospital.
"Let me just say," she recalled, "I sailed in right past the gunshot victims because I looked so bad."
Ripa previously recounted the incident in her 2022 memoir Live Wire, explaining that Consuelos called 911 and got her dressed while she was unconscious.
The experience apparently left such an impression that Ripa has previously taken precautions over what she would wear at her eventual funeral. In 2024, she revealed that she keeps a dress in her closet specifically for that purpose so Consuelos cannot select something "crazy."
For her latest plans, Ripa said everyone should simply handle the responsibilities they normally would.
"Put everybody in charge of what they're typically in charge of," she explained. "Everybody has their typical jobs. You be there, you eulogize, say nice things."
Ripa also clarified that this hypothetical funeral would not actually involve her being dead.
"And I'm going to be there, because I'm alive," she said. "Stop fantasizing that this is really happening. This is the FOMO funeral."
