Kelly Ripa Recalls Disastrous Parallel Parking Attempt on the ‘Late Show’

Kelly Ripa looked back at one of her not-so-great TV moments.

Ripa and Mark Consuelos kicked off the Tuesday, October 6, episode of Live With Kelly and Mark by discussing a parallel parking contest in Philadelphia. “I bring all of this up so we can go into the vault, [Michael] Gelman, if you will,” Ripa stated. “Many years ago, many, many years ago, can’t even remember the year, but somehow, I was going to be on [Late Show with David Letterman]. And I guess they were having a professional driver on, and they asked me if I knew how to parallel park, and I said, ‘Most definitely no.'”

Ripa noted that she has only parallel parked once in her life when she took her driver’s test. “Ever since then, I have just pulled into valet. Because guess what? I’m on TV, and that should count for something. I’m gonna use my TV money to pay for this valet parking,” she quipped. “I know what I’m good at, and I know what I’m not good at. I parallel parked to get my driver’s license, and then I moved to New York City, where I never drove again. The end.”

Despite insisting she couldn’t parallel park, Ripa said David Letterman ultimately convinced her to do it live on the Late Show. “You don’t want to disappoint the host of a talk show. Of course, that only counts at Letterman,” she joked. “People disappoint us all the time.”

Ripa then showed a clip from her Late Show parking attempt, which took place during a 2004 episode. “That’s bad. That’s a bad start,” Consuelos remarked while watching the throwback video, in which Ripa hit the cars on either side of the parking spot multiple times.

“That went exactly how I told them it was going to go,” she declared, adding, “What you don’t realize is there were crowds of people, and there were paparazzi. There were cameras there, photographing. I was under complete duress. I was under duress like a fugitive escaping something. And then, you don’t understand, I’m trying to do this in time for commercial break. It wasn’t just, like — I could have done it if I had 20 minutes. I had 20 seconds.”

Consuelos wrapped up the parallel parking discussion with one more playful jab at his wife. “That was pretty bad. That was bad,” he stated. “I’m not that good at it either.”

Ripa was cohosting Live with Regis Philbin at the time of her Late Show parking moment, having replaced former host Kathie Lee Gifford in 2001. After Philbin left the daytime talk show in 2011, Ripa continued to lead the series with co-hosts Michael Strahan and Ryan Seacrest before Consuelos took over in 2023.

Letterman launched the Late Show on CBS in 1993 and hosted it until 2015, after which Stephen Colbert took over. The series aired its final episode in May after the network canceled it for financial reasons. The cancellation sparked controversy, as many interpreted the decision as the network trying to appease the Trump administration.

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