T-minus seven episodes! After six years in the chair, Ryan Seacrest's last day as co-host of Live! With Kelly and Ryan is Friday, April 14, and his onscreen partner Kelly Ripa and crew are pulling out all the stops for his final week.
Kelly, whose new co-host will be her husband Mark Conseulos, teased the plans in store to say goodbye to Ryan with love, style, and good-natured fun… although she's keeping specifics close to her vest. "We have a lot of surprises," Kelly, 52, told E! at Variety's Power of Women event in NYC, adding that one plan was tempered a bit. "We initially thought that we would do seven days of roasting Ryan, but we're not going to completely roast him," she said, demurring to go into more details. "I can't tell you, but we have great surprises." (Watch a recent emotional on-air moment for Kelly and Ryan below)
As for her husband's official debut after years of frequent guest-hosting stints, Kelly's not concerned. "The beauty of our show is that that is not the assignment," she reasoned to E!. "The assignment is you don't really discuss what you're going to talk about. You find each other 30 seconds before the show starts, you go out there and you put on a show."
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Kelly was visibly emotional when Ryan announced his "bittersweet" departure from Live! back in February. "You are a gem, you are one of my best friends, and I said, the greatest part of this entire experience has been [that] you've gone from being a friend to a family member, you are family to us."
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Husband Mark will be Kelly's fourth permanent co-host after Regis Philbin, Michael Strahan, and Ryan.
Prior to this momentous co-host transition, Kelly has been on hiatus from the show for several weeks, enjoying an extended family vacation before returning to her native NYC. Her appearance at Tuesday's Variety Power of Women function was as an honoree, too: the mother of three was given an award for three decades of charitable work with WIN NYC, an organization that provides safe housing to homeless women and children.
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