Love on —And off — screen. Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, Vincent Van PattenAnd Eileen DavidsonMore celebrity couples fell in love while working on soap operas.
“I auditioned him,” Ripa recalled during a SiriusXM interview in August 2018 about meeting her now-husband. “They’d been looking for this character for some time … They didn’t want a dark-haired guy, they wanted a Latino actor. So I auditioned every Latino actor around the city and California. Then suddenly, Judy Blye WilsonHe was the casting director inAll My Children said, ‘I found him’ … [Judy] showed me his picture and … when I saw him, the photograph of him, I saw my entire future with him flash before [my eyes]. Like, I saw. I [didn’t] believe in any of that and now I do because of that moment.”
Consuelos and Ripa were the onscreen couple Hayley Vanaughan and Mateo Santos All My ChildrenSeveral years before it was finally closed in 2001. The RiverdaleStar previously described their connection as instant in a joint interview with The Live with Kelly & Ryan1996 cohost
“Before we ever had a scene together. We’ve been spending 12 hours a day together for the past year and a half,” Consuelos told Soap Opera DigestAt the time.
Ripa added, “We just understood each other really well. If two people were ever supposed to be together, I’d say it was us.”
The couple, who married in Las Vegas, May 1996, have three children: Michael Lola Joaquin.
Van Patten and Davidson’s love story, meanwhile, sounds more like a soap opera story line. The moment the retired tennis pro met the actress at TheYoung and RestlessIn 2000, they were both married. Their origin story was revealed in season 6 of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
“I knew he was married and I was married and I was totally respectful of that … but whatever. So, he and I, we had a friendship for a long time,” Davidson said in a January 2016 episode of the Bravo show. “We just kind of fell in love. I told my husband at the time, ‘We have a situation here. I am having feelings for somebody’ … I separated from my husband. I was like, ‘This isn’t good. We’ve got to separate.’”
Van Patten was married to Davidson in 2003.
Scroll down for a list other couples in soap operas.
