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Recently on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert concluded his interview with Kelly Ripa by asking when she would once again be half of a morning show duo. “Right now you’re plowing your way through a bunch of co-hosts,” Colbert said. “It’s been like nine months looking for a co-host. When are you going to put a ring on it, girl?” She turned the question around, suggesting Colbert give up his late-night mantle to take the job himself.
Live with Kelly and Michael became Live with Kelly last May when Michael Strahan—a Hall of Fame defensive end for the New York Giants—departed the show for a higher profile gig, Good Morning America. Strahan told People that he notified Ripa of the network’s plan (reportedly moments before the announcement was made in April), and she proceeded to take off the rest of that week to “gather [her] thoughts.” Originally scheduled to bid farewell to Live with Kelly and Michael in September, Strahan’s departure was accelerated by his strained relationship with Ripa (in People, he said Ripa’s reaction “didn’t surprise me at all” because he’d “been there long enough to understand how she reacts to things,” adding, “at one point I think we were friends.”) Per Page Six, Ripa was named a Live executive producer shortly thereafter. During her four year, on-air partnership with Strahan, they overpowered the competing hour of The Today Show in the ratings and, towards the end, shared back-to-back Daytime Emmy Awards for “Outstanding Talk Show Host.”
In October, Ripa’s friend and frequent guest co-host Anderson Cooper—a 60 Minutes correspondent and host of Anderson Cooper 360°—renewed his contract with CNN, ending speculation that he might take the morning gig. Sitting next to Cooper, Ripa admitted to Watch What Happens Live host Andy Cohen in late November, “He’s my life. He really is. He’s the one that got away and keeps getting away and gets away all the time.” When Cohen inquired about Live‘s timeframe for selecting a new co-host, Ripa replied that there wasn’t one. “What we didn’t anticipate was that we would have such an outpouring of interest, so our list got very long very quickly. So we’ve been trying to keep it as narrow as possible, but then people pop up…We just wanted to wait until we found the right person.” Page Six had predicted that Ripa would reveal Strahan’s replacement during November sweeps, but those came and went. Rob Lowe, Jeff Gordon and Mario Lopez were reportedly once in the running, but no longer; Jerry O’Connell is still campaigning for the post. Last spring, Alec Baldwin told Ellen DeGeneres that he’d consider filling Strahan’s chair if asked because it would keep him in the New York City, where he’s raising his young family (as are his current appearances on Saturday Night Live). Decider‘s Lea Palmieri argues that the job should just go to child star (The Princess Bride, The Wonder Years)-turned-television director (Modern Family, 2 Broke Girls) Fred Savage.
Ripa’s waiting game made us wonder if she’s taken longer than her predecessors to find a foil.
The show that we now know as Live evolved from The Morning Show, which was anchored by Strahan’s predecessor, Regis Philbin, from 1983 to 1988. Philbin’s original co-host, Cyndy Garvey, was notified that she’d filmed her last episode in May 1984, per her 1989 memoir The Secret Life of Cyndy Garvey (she continued to receive her normal salary until May 1985, when the network declined to renew her contract. She and Philbin had previously co-hosted A.M. Los Angeles together). Garvey was soon replaced with Ann Abernathy, who left the show in 1985 when she was expecting a child (WABC-TV’s vice president of programming, Art Moore, could not verify Abernathy’s Morning Show start and end dates; Abernathy did not respond to emails or a voicemail). In June 1985, the future Kathie Lee Gifford (then known as Kathie Lee Johnson) partnered with Philbin, and the show climbed to number one in its market. Less than three months into this TV union, The Morning Show was syndicated nationwide, and the series’s name changed to Live with Regis and Kathie Lee, beginning Live’s current era.
Gifford taped her last episode in July 28, 2000 (she has co-hosted the fourth hour of NBC’s Today since 2008; according to Page Six, Gifford’s Today time slot may change when Megyn Kelly joins the program this September). A little more than six months later, in February 2001, Ripa was named as her successor (Ripa, then a co-star on All My Children, first served as Philbin’s guest co-host the previous November, a memorable appearance where a psychic accurately guessed that she was pregnant with her second child). With the addition of Ripa, Live enjoyed an uptick in younger viewers. The next on-air personnel change followed a decade later, when Philbin, then 80, stepped down on November 18, 2011 (last month, in a Larry King Now interview, when asked if he stayed in touch with Ripa, Philbin said, “Not really, no”). Nine months later, Broadcasting & Cable reported that Strahan had agreed to assume Philbin’s role; Strahan made his longterm co-hosting debut a couple weeks later, meaning Ripa went 291 days without an official co-host. As of today, Ripa is at the 298-day mark. Thus this is the longest stretch in Live‘s 28-and-a-half year history without a fixed twosome at the desk, but not by much (so far).
