Mike Rowe Shares The Story Of How Dirty Jobs Started

While Mike Rowe was busy working as a reporter in San Francisco, he received a phone call that was the very start of him dreaming up the concept of "Dirty Jobs." "That show happened because my granddad turned 90," Rowe explained to The List. "And my mother called me and said, 'Michael, wouldn't it be great if before he died, your grandfather could turn on the TV and see you doing something that looked like work?'" The conversation struck a chord with the TV star, and the very next day, he headed down to the local sewer to do a report on a sewer inspector. That special report snowballed into something much more, and before Rowe knew it, "Dirty Jobs" was set to premiere on the Discovery Channel. 

The successful series made people take notice of the importance of the messy occupations around them. Yet, maybe more importantly, it had Rowe recognizing why he wanted to do this in the first place. "As I started to do the show, what I realized was, on a personal level, that I had become disconnected personally from a lot of things I had grown up with," he said. "A lot of things I took for granted, a lot of things I'd learned from my Pop: where my food came from, where my energy came from, how so many industries connect us all. Dirty industries." And fans everywhere were inspired by it, too.