TVSquad

With all the tumult at All My Children lately, here's some good news. For the 40th anniversary in January 2010, Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos will return to All My Children for a visit. On January 4th and 5th, Kelly and Mark will guest on the show, presumably as their AMC characters, Hayley and Mateo.

This will be their first return since leaving in 2002. Both have achieved success away from the show, in primetime on dramas and sitcoms, and especially for Kelly on Live with Regis and Kelly in morning talk. However, they both started on AMC and, in fact, that was where they met, fell in love, got married and lived happily ever after.

On screen, Kelly played Hayley and Mark was Mateo. They were an on-screen love story (that became an off-screen couple) and when they left the show, they were still together and committed to each other.

Since they're only slotted for a two-day visit, I doubt they'll have a big impact on the current storylines. More likely they'll be joining in some other festive occasion that will be a reason for other former stars to return to the soap. What they should do is dig into the vault and get some great clips of the two of them as they were. Nothing like a flashback of the way they were to ratchet up the nostalgia factor!