"You are the gift that keeps on giving," Kelly Ripa said about her youngest son
Joaquin Consuelos is all grown up!
The youngest son of Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos turned 16 on Sunday, and his famous parents couldn’t be more proud of the young man that he is.
In celebration of his birthday, the Live with Kelly and Ryan host, 48, and Riverdale star, 47, posted tributes in honor of Joaquin to Instagram, where they shared photos of him throughout the years.
“And then the newborn turned 16…..,” Ripa captioned her post, which featured numerous adorable snapshots of Joaquin, including him as a little boy.
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“Happy birthday Joaquin!!! You are the gift that keeps on giving,” she continued. “We all love you more than words can say ❤️💕⭐️🎂🎈🎉🎁.”
Alongside multiple recent photos of Joaquin — who closely resembles his father — Consuelos wrote, “Happy Birthday baller… We love you…”
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This May, the parents of three — they also share son Michael, 21, and daughter Lola, 17 — will celebrate their 23rd wedding anniversary.
And even before the happy couple met more than two decades ago, Ripa had a hunch that she would marry Consuelos.
“I saw my husband in a photograph before I saw him,” Ripa told Bruce Bozzi for his SiriusXM Radio Andy show “Lunch with Bruce” in August. “I knew when I saw his photograph.”
The couple met when Ripa auditioned Consuelos for his role as Mateo Santos on soap opera All My Children, on which she starred as Hayley Vaughan.
“They had been looking for this character for some time. They were looking really for a Latino actor, not an actor that was like — they didn’t want like a dark-haired guy. They wanted a Latino actor,” said Ripa. “And so I had auditioned every Latino actor in the city and around the city and then California. And then all of a sudden, Judy Blye Wilson, who was the casting director at All My Children, said, ‘I found him.’ ”
At the time, Consuelos had just graduated college and was a “green” actor who hadn’t done much work.
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“[Judy] showed me his picture and, Bruce, I’m not this person, at that point I was not a hopeless romantic. I never thought about getting married, it never occurred to me that I would grow old with someone. I just thought I would be living my single girl life in the city and sort of like moving. You know, if I needed to up and move to a location, I could do that. I had no responsibilities and I was earning a good living on this soap opera because I was there for almost seven years before Mark got there. … I was a baby when I got the job.”
When Ripa gazed at Consuelos’ photograph, she saw her “entire future with him flash before” her eyes.
“When I saw him, the photograph of him, I saw my entire future with him flash before — like I saw it,” said Ripa. “And I don’t believe in any of that and now I do because of that moment.”