The counterculture of the 1960s sparked Bill O'Reilly's journalism career.

Bill O'Reilly was born in New York City and raised in Long Island. He spent his early education in Catholic schools and attended Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. In his junior year, he studied abroad in London. O'Reilly said that when he returned from Europe, the '60s counterculture movement had become very popular in the US. And although he says he didn't participate, his observations of the times sparked his desire to become a journalist.