Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos on Marriage, Kids and Co-Hosting 'Live' : 'It's Going to Be Off the Rails!'

When Mark Consuelos pulls up that coveted chair beside Kelly Ripa as co-host of the newly titled Live With Kelly and Mark on April 17, it will be "a complete full circle moment" for the real-life married couple.

"To have Mark join me at that desk every day, it's a dream come true," Kelly, 52, tells PEOPLE in this week's cover story. "We've been so uniquely blessed."

As for what the pairing means for the irreverent and feel-good show? "It's going to be off the rails!" Kelly says, with a laugh.

"It's indescribable [and] we're super, super grateful," says Mark, who first made an impression on Kelly when she eyed his smoking-hot headshot nearly 30 years ago.

"I'm a very practical person, but there was something about him," says Kelly of the moment in 1994 when the casting director for All My Children showed her a photo of Mark, then a budding 24-year-old actor up for a role opposite Kelly, already one of the soap's breakout stars. "I was like, 'Oh my gosh, it's my person. This is my husband. My future hubs.' I just knew it."

As fate would have it, Kelly's intuition was spot on. The pair fell hard and fast while working on All My Children, and over 28 years, built a family — they share kids Michael, 25, Lola, 21, and Joaquin, 20 — and thriving individual careers.

And now, 22 years after Kelly began co-hosting Live and helped make it the No. 1-rated daytime talk show it is today, Mark, 52, is excited to get in on the action.

"I had filled in so many times and had a blast every single time," says the Riverdale alum, who guest-hosted 92 times during Kelly's tenure before replacing Ryan Seacrest at the helm. "Some people would die to have this opportunity. No one does it like she does… I can't think of anybody that I feel more safe with, and protected by, than Kelly."

For the power duo, teaming up on Live offers an ideal chance to hang out together after spending long stretches apart for work over the last decade.

"During the pandemic when Riverdale was shut down for about six months, it was the first time we had been together uninterrupted for like, five years," says Kelly. "I prefer the togetherness. I really enjoy being around him — he's great company, so funny, so smart, insightful, pragmatic and super level-headed. He doesn't get rattled, and that's very reassuring and comforting to be around."

Of course, like any enduring married couple, they've had to work hard at growing their healthy partnership. "I don't understand when people say, 'We never fight.' I go, 'Oh, they're in trouble,'" says Kelly, who eloped with Mark in Vegas in 1996.

"Many people we know have gone through a divorce and a separation and when you ask 'Why did you guys wind up getting a divorce?', it's always the same answer: 'I don't really know.' I feel like we could have over the years let something small turn into that and [instead] we just put our heads down, got together and said 'Let's work it out…'"

She adds: "Now we can work it out on camera!"

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While they don't intend to drag out all the dirty laundry ("We're not going to be like 'About that thing you said about my mother…'" she says), they've never been ones to hold back.

"We're not afraid to go there," she says. "We have the confidence in our marriage that no matter what we discuss, I don't mind being the villain in the argument, nor does Mark. Neither one of us needs to be the hero."

And given the already upbeat, playful tone of Live, Mark says, "If we think something is really going to be funny, then it can be magic."

Watch the full episode of People Cover Story: Kelly Ripa & Mark Consuelos below

For more of the exclusive cover interview with Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos, pick up an issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday.