Before the primetime slots, the high-stakes presidential debates, and the SiriusXM studio, there was a young woman in Chicago just trying to survive 100-hour work weeks. People tend to think Megyn Kelly just appeared on television one day, fully formed and ready to grill world leaders.
She didn't.
In fact, the version of young Megyn Kelly that existed in the late 1990s would probably be unrecognizable to her current audience. She wasn't a journalist. She was a "Rambo" litigator. She was a corporate lawyer who, by her own admission, spent her nights staring at the ceiling of a high-rise apartment, wondering if this was all there was to life.
The Syracuse Roots and the Tragedy That Changed Everything
Born in Champaign, Illinois, but raised in the suburbs of Syracuse and Albany, New York, Kelly’s early life was defined by a specific kind of middle-class intensity. Her father, Edward, was an education professor at SUNY Albany. Her mother, Linda, was a homemaker who later became a nurse.
Then, everything broke.
When Megyn was just 15, her father died of a sudden heart attack. It happened right before Christmas. Honestly, that kind of trauma does one of two things to a kid: it breaks them, or it turns them into a machine. For Kelly, it seems it was the latter. She has described herself as "listless" for a while after the funeral, but that didn't last. She ended up at Syracuse University, though she didn't get into the prestigious Newhouse School of Public Communications.
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Think about that. The woman who became one of the most famous broadcasters in America was rejected by her first-choice journalism school.
Instead, she studied political science at the Maxwell School. She was a Kappa Alpha Theta. She was involved in the student senate. She was, by all accounts, a striver. After graduating in 1992, she headed to Albany Law School. This is where the "trial chops" people saw on Fox News were actually forged. She was an editor for the Albany Law Review. She was the student who lived for the moot court.
The "Rambo" Lawyer Years in Chicago
Most people don't realize young Megyn Kelly spent nearly a decade in the legal trenches. After graduating law school in 1995, she landed at Bickel & Brewer in Chicago. This wasn't some sleepy firm where you wrote memos and went home at five. It was known for high-stakes, aggressive "Rambo litigation."
She was often the only woman in the room.
By 1997, she moved to the global powerhouse Jones Day. This is the big leagues of corporate law. We’re talking about representing massive clients like Experian. She was making $85,000 a year—which, in the mid-90s for a 25-year-old from a middle-class background, felt like a fortune.
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But it came with a price.
- Weeks of 18-hour days.
- Working every Saturday.
- Sundays that only felt "free" from noon to 6:00 PM.
Kelly has famously recalled a moment driving on the Kennedy Expressway in 2002 where she actually daydreamed about breaking a bone—nothing too serious, just enough to get a few weeks off work. When you're wishing for a fractured femur just to get a nap, you know you’re in the wrong profession.
The $10-an-Hour Career Pivot
The transition from law to news wasn't a glamorous leap. It was a grind. While still billing hours at Jones Day, she started auditing a broadcasting class at Columbia College in Chicago. She’d go down to the sidewalk and practice "pretend reporting" on camera, terrified that a law partner might walk by and see her.
She eventually moved to Washington, D.C. with her first husband, Dan Kendall. She didn't have a big network contract. She was a "stringer" for WJLA-TV, the local ABC affiliate.
Basically, she was a freelance reporter.
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She was covering local stories and national events like the confirmation hearings for Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito. She was using her legal degree to translate complex Supreme Court jargon for a local audience. It worked. People noticed that she wasn't just another talking head; she actually understood the law.
In 2004, she sent a tape to Kim Hume, the Washington bureau chief for Fox News. Kim showed it to her husband, Brit Hume. They were impressed. Roger Ailes was impressed. Within a year, she was no longer a local stringer; she was a legal pundit for the biggest cable news network in the country.
What You Can Learn From the Early Megyn Kelly
The story of young Megyn Kelly is basically a masterclass in the "pivot." It’s easy to look at her success now and assume it was a straight line. It wasn't. It was a series of grueling law firm years followed by a risky, lower-paying jump into a new industry in her early 30s.
If you’re looking to make a similar shift, here are the takeaways:
- Leverage your "other" expertise. Kelly didn't succeed just because she was good on camera; she succeeded because she was a better lawyer than the other reporters.
- Accept the "step back" to move forward. She went from a high-earning corporate litigator to a local stringer. You have to be willing to be "junior" again.
- The "Workaholic" foundation helps. The 100-hour weeks at Jones Day made the demands of a newsroom look easy by comparison.
The legal background is why she was able to hold her own against figures like Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin later in her career. She wasn't just asking questions; she was conducting a cross-examination. That style was born in the courtrooms of Chicago and the libraries of Albany Law, long before the world knew her name.
Actionable Insight: If you're feeling stuck in a career that's draining you, look for the "transferable edge." Like Kelly used her law degree to break into news, identify the specific skill in your current job that 90% of people in your dream job don't have. Use that to bridge the gap.