What were we thinking? Why did we write a letter to the magazine? That’s ridiculous. I’m not the kind of guy that writes letters to magazines looking for information. We wrote a letter to the magazine to get some help on fixing a historical detail, that doesn’t need to make sense.
And that letter was picked up by a TV producer who was trying to make the first season of Ask This Old House, and one thing led to the next and that was it. And then we wrote a letter to the looking for some help because Ask This Old House wasn’t on the air yet, so you couldn’t write them. And the only reason that I even imagined I could do it was because I watched This Old House growing up and was inspired by that. We wanted to do the work ourselves, make it our own. I tell the story that my wife and I, when we bought our first house. And in fact, there are so many things about that happening that are unbelievable to me, even to this day. RT Today : Could you have possibly thought back then that now you’d be hosting the show for 16-plus years? RT Today : Do you remember also very clearly when you were on Ask This Old House, before you were even a host? I believe it was a wallpaper related project? I remember being asked to say something and basically commit it to memory and think about where I was when I didn’t know where the camera was. I remember being asked to do something that I’d never done before. KOC: Not with total clarity, but I do have the recollections of it, yes. RT Today : Do you remember your very first episode?
Otherwise, it would’ve seemed so insanely foreign that I would’ve been like, “I don’t know what you mean, and the answer is no. And in hindsight, I think they’re probably the only people who could have asked me to be on TV that I would have said yes to. I didn’t aspire to it, but I was a huge fan and had great affinity for This Old House and those guys, having grown up watching it, being fascinated by that process that they talked about. I wasn’t even in a family video prior to them asking me to be on the TV show. I tell this story a lot, but I joke that I was never in the high school play. I never had any interest in television, let alone any sort of public role, performance, or whatever. Surprising and unbelievable are other good words. Kevin O’Connor: Surreal is a pretty good word. Residential Tech Today : Your journey to becoming the host of This Old House is so fascinating. O’Connor opens up about his very first episode and common DIY mistakes in this exclusive interview. With This Old House celebrating 40 years of reshaping abodes in 2019 and each host uniting for a 40th anniversary special, we were honored to discuss the current state of the residential world with the show’s current star. The program has even made strides to adapt to modern media, launching a YouTube channel that currently boasts more than a million subscribers. While there have been many changes along the way, such as the transition from original host Bob Vila to Steve Thomas to Kevin O’Connor, the themes of reinvention and creativity have persisted.
A simple advice inquiry to the spinoff project Ask This Old House led to not only a taped segment on the show, but an eventual call from the production staff that resulted in O’Connor’s role as host of the program.Įver since its launch in 1979, PBS’ This Old House has stood out for its ever-evolving focus on home renovation. While not the typical pre-television gig, it was his interest in DIY projects that would lead to a very unexpected opportunity. Before ever appearing on camera, O’Connor was a senior vice president in the Commercial Real Estate Group for Bank of America. If you told Kevin O’Connor he would become the third host of the PBS program This Old House in the beginning of the millennium, there’s no way he’d believe you.