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Louise Thomas
Editor
Kelly Ripa has revealed the one question she was surprised comedian Chris Rock asked her.
On Wednesday, July 10, during an episode of Live with Kelly and Mark, both she and her husband Mark Consuelos were discussing some of their friends who have used the same names for their children.
“Can you imagine if one of our friends said: ‘You can’t name that kid Lola because I’m going to name the kid Lola?’” Consuelos asked Ripa, using their 23-year-old daughter Lola as an example.
“No but remember, there’s a very funny story,” his wife and co-host replied. “Chris Rock called me when he was expecting his first daughter — I had just had Lola — and he said: ‘Listen, Malaak and I are thinking of naming the baby Lola and we just want to check with you to see if that’s okay.’”
“And I was like: ‘First of all, I don’t own the name Lola, I didn’t trademark it. And second of all, we can all agree Lola Rock is an amazing name.’ Like: ‘Do you mind if I change Lola’s last name to Rock?’”
“That was very polite of him,” Consuelos chimed in.
Ripa then explained that, because of how common the name Lola is, she never thought of needing to grant the comedian permission to use it himself. “Yeah, but it never occurred to me. I wouldn’t even… I’m not the only Kelly, you’re not the only Mark,” she said.
The couple also shares two sons: Michael, 27, and Joaquin, 21.
Recently, the pair had a conversation about arranged marriages on their show and how involved they feel parents should be in their children’s dating lives.
“Well listen to this,” Ripa was telling her husband during a June episode of their talk show. “The Indian Matchmaking show sort of brought it to the forefront in showing people what the arranged marriages thing is sort of all about. So the national divorce average is around 50 percent. Arranged marriage divorce rate is four percent. So parents know what they’re talking about.”
This information prompted Consuelos to wonder out loud: “Would we do that for our kids?”
“I think we would select the kids that our kids are with, we would select those kids. If I could have hand-selected them… but I don’t want to say that,” Ripa responded.
The two of them came to the conclusion that the best decision they could make when it came to their children and who they date was to “say nothing.”
