- Kelly Ripa spoke to Insider about her and Mark Consuelos becoming empty nesters.
- The "Live Wire" author said they've been trying more daring activities, like rock climbing.
Kelly Ripa said that she and her husband Mark Consuelos are indulging in more adventurous activities as empty nesters.
"We took our first vacation in June without our children that we've ever had," Ripa told Insider while discussing her collection of personal essays, "Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories," released on Tuesday.
Ripa and Consuelos, who wed in 1996, have three children: sons Michael, 25, and Joaquin, 19, and daughter Lola, 21. Until recently, Ripa said that the couple hadn't been on a vacation without their kids since their five-day honeymoon.
"Mark always jokes that a vacation with your kids is a trip," she said. "You don't take a vacation, you take a trip."
"We took a vacation," Ripa continued. "We woke up when our eyes opened."
"There was no schedule but our own," the "Live! With Kelly and Ryan" cohost said. "So we hiked, we talked, we read, we watched the evening news, we went to late dinners, we had late breakfasts. We did whatever we felt like. We went to the spa. We went into one of those flotation tanks that you float in warm salt water and it's dark and you just float there and they play chimes and things, and you listen to sounds."
In her book "Live Wire," Ripa credited her long-lasting marriage to mastery of "the dark art of compromise."
"Marriage is work, and making a long-term marriage last takes a special kind of patience, understanding, and work ethic," she wrote. "It also requires bravery. Any two people in a long-term relationship will tell you that it's not for the faint of heart. Marriage is for warriors."
Ripa said that she feared she and Consuelos would be headed for a divorce when their youngest child, Joaquin, moved into a dorm at the University of Michigan in 2021.
"It suddenly dawned on me that we were in prime position to be THAT couple, the one that gets divorced as soon as the kids were out of the house," she wrote.
Instead, their marriage remains strong and they've been embracing their newfound freedom.
"It was luxurious and adventurous," Ripa told Insider of their recent vacation. "We didn't get bored. Our kids called us several times because they thought we might miss them or that we were bored in some way. And we tried to pretend, 'It's not as much fun without you guys,' but we had the time of our lives."
Ripa said that in the absence of their kids, the pair "have taken up adventure."
This includes rock climbing and other challenges that they "never would've done before."
"We're definitely taking up more adventurous things that we've always wanted to try, but maybe we've done other things because the kids wanted to," she said.