Kelly Ripa said Mark Consuelos threw her wedding ring out a window during their first year of marriage and it was a 'defining moment'

• Mark Consuelos once tossed Kelly Ripa's wedding ring out a window early in their marriage.
• Ripa told the "Double Date" podcast she was sure many people would have called it quits after that.
• She said she understood her husband's "terror and genuine fear" of being married young.

Mark Consuelos and Kelly Ripa are celebrating 25 years of marriage.

While speaking on the "Double Date" podcast, Ripa recalled a "defining moment" from their first year of marriage.

"When we first got married, I think Mark felt like he rushed into it and maybe he made a mistake and maybe he was regretting it, and he took my wedding ring and threw it out the window," Ripa told Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue on the April 19 episode.

"He turned around, and I said, 'I'm still here,'" Ripa added. "I really think he thought in that moment that somehow I would just vanish or evaporate."

Ripa and Consuelos eloped in 1996 after meeting a year prior on ABC's long-running soap opera "All My Children." The two played Hayley and Mateo, on-screen love interests and a fan-favorite couple.

On "Double Date," Ripa said she was taken with Consuelos before they formally met.

"The casting director, she said, 'I think I found our guy," Ripa said. "She shows me this picture, and I thought to myself, 'I'm dazzled. I am dazzled by this person.' And I don't get dazzled. A headshot is a headshot."

"It wasn't a particularly good headshot either," Consuelos added.

The two met a day before his screen test for the soap. Ripa said she was in curlers, didn't have makeup on yet, and had a pimple covered with medicine.

"I looked like a disaster," Ripa said. "I walked in the room, and there was the headshot."

Ripa called the tossing of the wedding ring a "big, bold move" and something that would have caused a lot of other people to call it quits.

But in the moment, Ripa said she understood where her husband, who was 25 at the time, was coming from.

"It was, like, coming from a place of terror and genuine fear and, 'Oh, my God. I have to spend the rest of my life with this woman who does not value time, who is chronically late,'" Ripa said.

"I looked at him, and I said, 'I get it. I'm young and married and I'm scared, too. I get it. This is forever. I'm with you,'" Ripa said. "Now we have to go find this ring.'

"And I did," Consuelos said.

"To me, that's a defining moment," Ripa said. "I'm sure there are a lot of people who would have said, 'I'm done. That is outrageous. That is crazy behavior.'"