Kelly Ripa’s new book has officially hit shelves, but Kathie Lee Gifford won’t be picking up a copy.
In Kelly’s memoir Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories, which dropped on September 27, the Generation Gap host opened up about everything from starring on All My Children where she met her husband, Mark Consuelos, to hosting the daytime TV show Live for over 20 years. In the latter portion, Kelly touched on her “complicated” relationship with one of her Live co-hosts, the late Regis Philbin.
Ahead of the title’s release, Kelly revealed to People details about the “good and bad days” working with Regis. “I don’t want to feel like I’m slamming anyone or that I’m being disrespectful. But I also want people to know it was not a cakewalk,” she told the magazine. “It took years to earn my place there and earn things that are routinely given to the men I worked with. Including an office and a place to put my computer.”
Speaking on Good Day New York, Kathie, who co-hosted with Regis for over a decade first on the New York-based program The Morning Show in 1985 and later on Live With Regis and Kathie Lee in 1988, shared that she was surprised by Kelly’s comments about the late Who Wants to Be a Millionaire host.
“I saw that and I went, ‘Oh, I hope this isn’t true.’ I just hope it isn’t, because what’s the point? I don’t get it,” she said on the show. “I’m not going to read the book. I haven’t read it. I don’t even know if it’s out yet. I just know what Regis was to me.”
Kathie continued: “He was, for 15 years, the best partner a person could ever, ever have professionally, but he was my friend. We were dear friends and after I left the show, for the next 20 years, we became better friends, dearer friends.”
Kathie and Regis co-hosted Live together for 12 years until Kathie departed in 2000. The next year, Kelly was named Regis’s new co-star. The Kelly-Regis partnership lasted a decade until 2011. In July 2020, Regis died at the age of 88 from natural causes.
Kathie went on to explain that her “first thought” when she read the latest headlines was his family. “Lord, protect [his wife Joy Philbin] and the girls from this,” she added. “In all the years I knew him, I never saw him unkind to anyone. I never did. If he liked you, he teased you.”
According to Kelly, she struggled early on after joining the daytime talk show. “The biggest misconception is that it all came easily,” she told the outlet. “People think I just showed up one day and was handed a job and I lived happily ever after and now everything’s perfect. But it never is that way.”
Over their time together though, Kelly says her relationship with Regis grew stronger on and off the stage. In the end, she looks at her memories with Regis fondly.
“If I could become a tenth as good, I’d be happy,” she later revealed to People about his storytelling abilities. “It’s taking the audience on a ride with you and remembering that you are always the butt of the joke. I loved him and I still do.”
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