Early life[edit]
Rowe was born in
Baltimore, Maryland to parents John and Peggy Rowe. Rowe is said in commercials for
Dirty Jobs that the show is a tribute to his father and grandfather. Rowe became an
Eagle Scout in 1979 in Troop 16 in Baltimore.
[1] During his service project for Eagle Scout at the
Maryland School for the Blind, he read aloud to students, and he cites this as one of the reasons he became interested in narrating and writing.
[1][2] On being an Eagle Scout, he said "The Eagle Award is not really meant for people who need to be dragged across the finish line. It's meant for a select few... ."'
[1] In June 2012 Rowe was awarded the
Distinguished Eagle Scout Award by the
Boy Scouts of America.
[3]
Rowe sang professionally with the
Baltimore Opera.
[7][8] He says about this job, "I joined the opera to get my union card and meet girls. I was a saloon singer, so I went down to the Baltimore Opera and learned an aria and auditioned. I figured I'd do one show and quit. But the girls were everywhere and the truth is, the music was really decent."
[9]
Television career[edit]
As host[edit]
In the early 1990s, Rowe was an on-air host for the
home-shopping TV network
QVC.
[10] In a 2006 interview, Rowe related how he got the job at QVC: "I was in the opera at the time. I walked across the street with a buddy of mine during a performance. We're dressed as Vikings and we have a drink. The TV is turned to QVC .... My buddy bets me $100 I can't get a call back. So I crashed the audition and got a job on the spot. I basically turned the whole thing into my own stupid
David Letterman show. I made fun of the callers and made fun of the products."
[9]
Rowe has claimed that QVC fired him three times.
[9] When told in a
2008 episode of Dirty Jobs that the gourds he was working on would be sold via QVC, he said he was familiar with the corporation and proceeded to ad-lib a sales pitch for them.
[11]
CNN announced on April 10, 2014 that Rowe would host
Somebody's Gotta Do It, a new "Original Series" that began in the Fall 2014 lineup. Rowe highlights "unique individuals" in their respective passionate undertakings, whether it be work, hobby or fanaticism.
Somebody's Gotta Do It is produced by
Craig Piligian’s
Pilgrim Studios.
[13]
As narrator[edit]
On
Dirty Jobs, Rowe frequently mocks his seeming omnipresence on Discovery Channel; when a segment on firefighting and salvage was unable to be completed in a single day, he assured his firefighter host that he would "send over the
MythBusters ... maybe the
American Chopper boys ... [to finish the job]".
Rowe was originally tapped to be the on-screen host of the
Discovery Channel's
Deadliest Catch, a show about crab fishing in the
Bering Sea, and shot footage aboard several crab boats in addition to narrating the series. When
Dirty Jobs was picked up by Discovery, he was told to choose which show he wanted to appear in on-screen. Rowe claims he was told by Discovery that the shows would air back-to-back on the same night: "We can't have you telling us stories about six dead fishermen on camera and making a fart joke with your arm in a cow's ass".
[15] Rowe chose to host
Dirty Jobs and narrate
Deadliest Catch; the footage of him on the boats was not used in the series, although he did appear in a season finale of
Deadliest Catch, interviewing the boat captains. Rowe hosted a related show about life on the Bering Sea, a 2007 miniseries,
After the Catch, a show which has continued after each season of
Deadliest Catch.
Additional appearances[edit]
Rowe appeared on an episode of
Sesame Street (Season 39) in a segment called "Dirtiest Jobs With Mike Rowe", which aired on October 13, 2008. Rowe visits Sesame Street to find the dirtiest job, which happens to belong to Oscar. Rowe must do all the things Oscar does. His tasks include finding and counting stinky cheese, sorting trash, and giving his pet pig, Spot, a mud bath. To Oscar's chagrin, Rowe does not want to stop, as he is having too much fun.
In June 2013, Mike Rowe spoke to the delegates at the 49th Annual National Leadership and Skills Conference for
SkillsUSA in Kansas City, Missouri. He addressed the crowd of 15,000+ at Kemper Arena about the importance to "Work Smart
and Hard".
[22]
As pitchman[edit]
In 1998, Rowe was the television spokesperson for Epic Pharmacy, a Baltimore-area association of independent pharmacies.
Beginning in March 2007, he was featured in several
Ford Motor Company F-Series truck commercials, presented in a style similar to
Dirty Jobs, including one for Ford Sync.
[23][24] In the summer of 2009, he appeared in advertisements for Ford and
Lincoln-Mercury vehicles that used the tagline:
"Why Ford. Why Now."[25]
In 2010, Rowe appeared in internet spots for Motorola
iDEN combined radios/mobile phones, explaining that the phones were used "by real people, for real work" as they were used for
Dirty Jobs-type applications.
In 2010, Rowe partnered with
Lee Premium Select Jeans and appeared in television spots wearing jeans that "make my butt look good".
On July 26, 2010, Rowe became the spokesperson for
Caterpillar. Rowe will work with dealers and customers "to get a real world perspective on their jobs".
[26]
In 2011, Rowe appeared with his parents in television spots for Viva paper towels.
[27]
In 2012, Rowe became a spokesperson for
Novartis animal health to educate pet owners about fleas. The campaign is called “The Dirty Truth about Fleas.”
Trade activism[edit]
On Labor Day 2008, Rowe launched a website, mikeroweWORKS.com, which is focused on the decline in the
blue collar trades and the crumbling state of the
infrastructure. A trade resource center has been launched and provides information, resources, and forums for people interested in learning about, or pursuing a career in, the trades,
[1] as well as a new blog aggregator for the trades and construction industry called the "Trades Hub", which launched in April 2011.
On September 19, 2010, Mike Rowe and the
Association of Equipment Manufacturers started a campaign called "I Make America". The campaign aims to create jobs in the manufacturing sector by encouraging infrastructure investment and export agreements. The group argues that this will improve the economy and global competitiveness of the United States.
[28]
Mike Rowe has contributed video content to The Alabama Construction Recruitment Institute's trade-worker recruiting campaign GoBuildAlabama.com, culminating in an
Iron Bowl-themed commercial broadcast on local CBS affiliates during Thanksgiving weekend 2010.
[29]
Rowe sent a letter to President Obama at the start of his first term offering to help promote the 3 million "shovel-ready" jobs promised during the campaign, suspecting it might be a tough sell, "given the country's then-current relationship with the shovel." He did not receive a reply. During the
2012 presidential election, Rowe contacted GOP candidate
Mitt Romney and appeared with him on September 26, 2012, at a campaign event in
Ohio. Romney explained to those in attendance, "He's non partisan, he's not here to endorse me, he's not here to add support to one campaign or another," Romney said of his guest. "He's here to talk about his ideas about how to help America create more jobs."
[32]
In Spring 2013, mikeroweWORKS launched its newest initiative, Profoundly Disconnected. Rowe states, "many of the best opportunities that exist today require a skill, not a diploma. The purpose of this site is to promote that simple truth." While in high school in 1979, Rowe saw a poster in his
guidance counselor's office that read "Work Smart, Not Hard". He hated it so much, he changed it to "Work Smart AND Hard"; he now prints such posters and wants them hanging all over the country to get people to change the way hard work is perceived.
[33]
Despite his criticism of student loans and the rising cost of tuition, he has carried on a partnership with Universal Technical Institute. UTI is a For-Profit trade school investigated by the Senate. In its investigation, the Senate found that UTI did not provide a better education than a community college, but charged significantly more.
[34]
Personal life[edit]
Filmography[edit]
Television[edit]
