Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos Recall Rushing Their First Baby to the Doctor After He Ate a Piece of Already-Chewed Gum Off Restaurant Table
Kelly Ripa told a story about her son eating a used piece of gum.
Aug. 27 2026, Published 7:50 p.m. ET
Kelly Ripa recalled panicking after watching her first child, Michael, eat an old chewed piece of gum off the underside of a restaurant table, Breaking Celebrity News can reveal.
The talk show host hilariously recounted the story during the Tuesday, August 25, installment of Live With Kelly and Mark.
'This Happened in One Second'
Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos share three kids.
The incident occurred while Ripa, 55, and her husband, Mark Consuelos, also 55, were out eating at an Italian restaurant.
"Our son was like, maybe 16 months old, something like that," she began. "He was sitting in his little high chair, the kind that you press up against the table. And he's fiddling with something under the table."
"I was like, 'What are you doing? What do you got there?'" she remembered asking him. "And he looked, he pulled off – and I mean in one second, this happened in one second – he pulled off a piece of gum and shoved it into his mouth and swallowed it."
'We Were Like Running Down the Street'
Kelly Ripa said they brought the baby to the doctor right after the incident.
Ripa revealed that they rushed out of the restaurant and "carried" the toddler to the doctor to get him checked out.
"We were like running down the street," she said. "We're like, 'we'll be back to pay the bill in a minute, oh my gosh!'"
"Yeah, I remember that," Consuelos chimed in. "And he's fine."
"He's fine. But can you imagine? First baby. This was our first baby," she replied, before quipping, "By the third baby, we were letting him eat all the gum."
Ripa and Consuelos got married in 1996. Aside from Michael, they also share two other children – Lola and Joaquin.
Kelly Ripa Remembers Bug Crawling Out of Salad
Kelly Ripa said the bug was 'desperate to escape' her plate.
Ripa's wild story of the early days of parenthood comes weeks after she remembered another stomach-turning restaurant-related memory – a bug once crawled out of her salad "literally drenched in dressing."
When she approached the restaurant staff about the problem, she said that they asked, "You think we put that in there?"
Ripa replied, "Do you think I put that in there?"
"It was just like a little insect," she clarified after her husband asked her if she knew what kind of bug it was. "I don't know. It's like the kind that comes with the salad. But it was still alive, and it was desperate to escape."
Kelly Ripa's COVID Confession
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Kelly Ripa claimed she didn't wear pants while filming 'Live' during COVID.
Unafraid to get TMI on the show, Ripa also confessed she opted to go pants-less while filming Live from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
"I loved doing the show without pants on," she said earlier this month. "Guess what? While you were watching the show and we were shooting from a computer screen, I had a blouse on top and nothing on the bottom."
She also admitted to having a "bowl of Grape-Nuts clutched in between my thighs" off camera that she would eat from when they cut to commercial.
"I would be Grape-Nutting it, and then, back to air," Ripa added. "It was great!"
