Nearly three months after Maria Menounos announced that she and Keven Undergaro were about to start a family, the actress, podcast host, E! News alumni, and media personality revealed the sex of their unborn child. “We’re very excited to announce we have a baby girl coming,” Maria, 44, said on the Apr. 24 episode of the Heal Squad x Maria Menounos podcast. She also said that she and Keven, 55, may have the name for their baby. “We’ve been thinking about names for years, cause as you may or may not know, this has been almost a 10-year journey for us. We’ve thought about names forever, and I think we’ve come up with the perfect name for this baby.”
Maria also noted that the moniker could change when they meet the child for the first time. There was speculation that the couple was expecting a boy because Maria wore a blue dress during a recent appearance on Live with Kelly and Ryan. So, she used her platform to correct the notion and share the good news.
The couple went the surrogacy route after trying to conceive a child for more than ten years. “Just after a decade of trying everything, we are so grateful to the beautiful family helping us conceive our baby,” Maria said in a statement she gave PEOPLE in February 2023. “Keven, my dad, and I are all beyond excited for this soul to come into our lives. What a blessing.”
“So we had a lot of plans,” Maria said on Feb. 7 episode of Live with Kelly and Ryan. “We were going to go to Greece in the summer. We’re having to move that up because we’re having a baby. I had to share it here first because you guys are my family, you guys have been on the journey, and I’m so grateful. I’m emotional, I’m super excited,” she said, per GMA.
She said during the Live appearance that she was leaning toward surrogacy after speaking with her fertility doctors. “We’ve done literally everything. They tried to you know, get me pregnant, that didn’t work. Had a surgery, that didn’t work. We did everything, but we got so lucky.”
“Zoe Saldana and Kim Kardashian have been so helpful to me in this journey, and they both gave me all their advice and people,” Maria said at the time. “And Kim especially gave me this wonderful lawyer named Andy, and he found me this woman, Stephanie, who helped me find my surrogate. We’re just so grateful because these people really help you bring life forward. And without them, we wouldn’t be able to do this.
“Our surrogate and her family are literal angels,” she added. “I’m so grateful to have this extended family that our baby will be part of and we’re just so grateful to everybody who’s helped us along the way.”