Exclusive | Brian Kilmeade reveals strange source of inspiration as he looks back on epic 30 years at Fox News

Brian Kilmeade struck out a lot trying to make it as a news anchor before becoming one of the most beloved faces on Fox News.The veteran host is now celebrating an epic 30 years at the network.“I got thousands of rejection letters…I kept a lot of them,” Kilmeade, 62, told The Post, recalling his time as just another 30-something-year-old man trying to catch his break in the 1990s. “Some people look at my tape and say, ‘One thing I know for sure is I’m never hiring that guy,'” the broadcaster, who is known for his self-deprecating humor on “Fox & Friends” each morning, quipped.But Long Islander never pouted.

Instead, he used the rejections as emotional fuel.“I found it inspiring,” Kilmeade said, “‘I just said, ‘Okay, it’s not going to stop me.

The more I get, the closer I’m going to get to a yes.” After persistently bouncing around stations on the East and West coasts, his big break finally came 30 years ago on Oct.7, 1996, when a startup called Fox News took a chance on him.Kilmeade began on the network’s first-ever day with a ground-floor fill-in gig at Fox’s then-basement studio space and newsroom inside an old Sam Goody music store.“It was like what I imagine it felt like walking into the Yankee locker room when they were the Highlanders,” he said. “You could tell this place was built to win.”The new network took tons of flak after its launch over its news structure and headline formatting, Kilmeade said — but it didn’t deter the newfound staff, who were excited to be disruptors.“It was like the Bill Parcells attitude: ‘show the experts why they’re wrong,” the host said. “That whole attitude still exists today.”Kilmeade, a former soccer player at Long Island University, was eventually offered a full-time contract for a sports show in 1997, but he could read the writing on the wall. He saw the “world going turbo speed” between the death of Princess Diana, the Bosnian War, and the Bush vs...