Maria Menounos Fills In For Kelly Ripa And Accidentally Drops A Baby Bombshell

Maria Menounos filled in for Kelly Ripa during the Wednesday, August 5 episode of Live! with Kelly and Ryan, and she broke some pretty big personal news.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, Kelly is on vacation, so Ryan Seacrest will be joined by guest co-hosts during the next few episodes. During her appearance, Maria, 42, announced that she and her husband, Keven Undergaro, 52, finally found a surrogate after a long search. The TV personality revealed that it happened right before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out. She said that the couple was “super excited.”

Maria began filling out all the final paperwork while she was working at AfterBuzz TV, the online broadcast network that she and Keven created.

“I loaded the account with the funds. I signed all the paperwork, and then, boom, Covid happened. Like three days later, we were quarantined,” Maria recounted.

She revealed that the surrogacy process is finally progressing again, but she pointed out that the pandemic has started to get worse in the United States. She also suggested that all the delays caused by the coronavirus could possibly be a sign of some sort.

“Every time we’re doing this, I’m like, ‘God, if this isn’t supposed to happen, give me a sign,’ but then God gives me signs, and I’m like, ‘But I don’t think that’s for me,'” she said.

Ryan reassured her by saying that the deadly disease is “too big of a sign” to be aimed at her. Luckily, the pandemic hasn’t dampened her excitement about becoming a parent, and her partner of over two decades is also eager to move things along. While talking about how her husband called to get an update on the process, Maria seemingly let it slip that the couple wants to have more than one child.

“He’s like, ‘Where are we at? I want my babies!'” she recalled. “I mean, ‘baby,’ or whatever. Oops. Well, there you go. We’re going to try for more than one.”

During a 2018 Us Weekly interview, Maria revealed that she was getting surrogacy advice from reality show star Kim Kardashian, whose daughter Chicago was born via surrogate. Maria had tried an IVF treatment in 2016 that was unsuccessful, and her plans to start a family were further derailed the following year when she was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor. She opted to try the surrogacy route in order to give her body a rest.

Unfortunately, the talk show host’s mother, Litsa, had a tumor recurrence last year after battling stage four brain cancer. During a November 2019 interview with Entertainment Tonight, Maria said that her mother’s health struggles had caused a delay in getting her paperwork sent to the surrogate agency, but she wanted to “keep moving things forward.” This April, Maria shared some good news with her fans when she announced that her mother’s tumor had shrunk down to just a “hint.”