“I’ve never had a brother but my relationship with him is very much like how I would imagine what a relationship with a brother would be. We can disagree in a way that is not provocative or upsetting to anyone. We challenge each other and we really believe in each other.”

— Kelly Ripa, co-host, ‘Live! With Kelly and Mark’

By Paige Albiniak

Veteran daytime talk show Live! has been called many things, but never Live! with Gelman. But perhaps it should have been, since executive producer and B+C Hall of Fame inductee Michael Gelman has been with the show since its inception as The Morning Show, starring Regis Philbin and Cyndy Garvey, on WABC New York in 1983.

Gelman was named the show’s EP before it went into national syndication in 1988, when the show starred Philbin and Kathie Lee Gifford (then Johnson) and was called, famously, Live With Regis and Kathie Lee. Since then, it’s been called Live! With Regis and Kelly from 2001-11, after Kelly Ripa joined; Live! With Kelly alone, when Philbin retired in 2011-12; Live! With Kelly and Michael from 2012-16, when Michael Strahan came on board; Live! With Kelly (again) from 2016-17, after Strahan left to join ABC’s Good Morning America; Live! With Kelly and Ryan from 2017-23, when Ryan Seacrest became co-host; and currently Live! With Kelly and Mark, which finds Ripa working with her husband and frequent guest host Mark Consuelos.

Through it all, Gelman has been stage-side, gently joking with the hosts and coaxing quips from them. He appears on camera but he’s never center stage. He’s on air often enough, however, that people approach him in the street.

Familiar Face

“I’m one of those people who are on-air so people talk to me about my own show all over the place. I saw people in Europe who were like ‘Hey, Gelman, what are you doing here?’ ” Gelman said. “I’m a one-man focus group and I’m always getting feedback along the way.”

Gelman started as an intern at Live! when it was still The Morning Show with Philbin and Garvey. He so impressed the team that he was brought back as a freelance production assistant, then a full-time production assistant and, pretty soon, Philbin’s right-hand man.

Gelman left The Morning Show for a while to work with Philbin on other projects and on CBS’s primetime game show, Hollywood Squares. But then he got the call that the local show’s EP, Steve Ober, was leaving, so he threw his hat in the ring at the age of 24. He landed the gig and one year later, took the show into national syndication.

Even though Gelman has ostensibly been doing the same job for four decades, what he loves about it is that it’s always changing. 
 

“The different phases of the show are really what have kept me excited and interested. Those moments of change and creating different versions of what we are already doing is what I love.”
–– Michael Gelman

Gelman’s concept of Live! has always been that it’s about a faux husband and wife chatting in the morning over coffee. “Gelman has become the third host of the show. Don’t tell him that, he’s going to want a pay bump,” Ripa joked. “I’ve never had a brother but my relationship with him is very much like how I would imagine what a relationship with a brother would be. We can disagree in a way that is not provocative or upsetting to anyone. We challenge each other and we really believe in each other.”

Said Consuelos: “He has an innate understanding of what our audience needs, what they are looking for and how to keep them happy. He’s really protective over that. It’s funny, a lot of the producers have been there since day one as well, and they keep the show what it’s been for so long.”

Live and Loose

The other constant to Live! is that it has always aired live in New York and the East Coast and live-to-tape in other markets. While live TV can be intimidating to some, the show’s hosts and Gelman wouldn’t have it any other way.

“That last-minute looseness of coming together is what Live! does best,” Seacrest said. “The producers’ meetings run right up to the end and you are running out there as the clock is ticking down — three, two, one. But that pace became the pace we were most comfortable in. Anything outside of fast and immediate felt awkward. Gelman always trusted us to take the show where it needed to go.” 

This fall, Live! With Kelly and Mark starts its 38th season as TV’s highest-rated entertainment talk show. 
“I’m most proud of the fact that we’ve been able to bring joy and entertain so many people for such an extended period of time,” Gelman said. “I keep it in perspective that what we do is not brain surgery, but we don’t have to feel guilty about being in entertainment and it’s not unimportant. Bringing that distraction, joy and laughter every day is something that people appreciate.”