Some things you might not know about Karl Stefanovic: he has trained to be a kindergarten teacher and an actor. His tastes range from Mozart to Melrose Place. The first conversation he had with his now-wife, Cassandra Thorburn, involved her mostly "hanging shit" on him.

Indeed, these last two facts are related.

"We met at a Melrose Place party," he recalls, "and she told me I look like a preppy. She said, 'I suppose that's how you got your job in television, because of your pretty-boy looks'."

It was the mid-1990s. Thorburn was working with ABC radio in Rockhampton, where Stefanovic had just moved as a cub reporter for WIN television. The town's media industry was tight-knit – and a social highlight for its young journalists were the weekly Melrose Place parties. (No prizes for guessing when they were held. As the Channel Ten promotions memorably declared: "Tuesday night's a bitch.")

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"The show was huge," Stefanovic says. "You'd go and watch it at someone's house, have a few beers and some laughs. It was the thing to do."

He was smitten the moment this sassy ABC reporter spoke to him. Her teasing only heightened his attraction.

"It took me a while to track her down afterwards, but I did," he says over baked eggs and haloumi at Melbourne's Trunk Diner. He's particularly impressed by the dish's mixed beans, having developed a taste for Mexican food while reporting for Nine in Los Angeles. I opt for the hearty all-day burger: bacon, egg and cheddar on a thick bun. 

The reason we're eating eggs for lunch is that it's 9am. When you work in breakfast television, you're usually on to your second meal while everyone else is pouring their Cornflakes. 

It is in this interview that Stefanovic reveals his now-famous sexism test. Every day, for one year, he wore the same cheap blue suit on air to see if anyone would notice. They didn't, of course, and the story was reported around the world.

This is not dropped in as a boast. Rather, he seems prompted to divulge it after a lengthy conversation about sexism and the women he's worked with.

He praises each by name, singling out Tracy Grimshaw ("without a doubt Australia's best television interviewer"), and his current co-host, Lisa Wilkinson.

Stefanovic puts down his fork and looks me in eye. 

"I don't care what anyone says out there. Lisa and my relationship is special and we love each other to death."

He freely admits to a few "dramas". Disagreements are inevitable, he says, when you work closely with someone over eight years. But while these are feverishly reported as "feuds", the reconciliations that quickly follow are overlooked.

"We've had an amazing and enduring partnership. We've loved each other, we've hated each other and we've loved each other again. You have your ups and downs but I think that's normal!"

Although it might fail to excite the tabloids, Stefanovic says the real story is one of friendship and mutual respect. He admires Wilkinson as a journalist, a feminist, a parent and an industry pioneer. (She edited her first national magazine at 21.)

It's not surprising he's irritated by allegations of a "blokey culture" on his show. But how did this notion take hold?

One theory is that people who don't watch Today (including many in the media) are dimly aware its team is more male-skewed than Sunrise's. If the men on either show occasionally do something silly, it becomes a story. Non-viewers eventually conclude they're boofheads. Because Today's core team has more men, it is deemed to be "blokier".

It's this implicit whiff of chauvinism that really irks Stefanovic.

There was a time, he scoffs, when broadcasters habitually patronised women by "speaking down" to them. Should anyone try this today, they'll find themselves with no audience. Viewers will simply change the channel – or platform – in favour of smart, engaging content. He is well aware that the real contest is not Today versus Sunrise; it's Today versus the world.

Yet even as prime time audiences splinter, breakfast TV remains curiously strong, with millions of Australians watching the early morning slot on Seven, Nine or ABC each week.

This year, Sunrise extended its lead over Today. Stefanovic attributes this to some format tweaks and the loss of Georgie Gardner. "If you mess with some of the more traditional things, it's a recipe for bleeding viewers. Sylvia [Jeffreys, her replacement] is a star, though. The audience is getting to know her now.

"For whatever reason, we lacked consistency this year. But we're trying to bleed viewers back now by being consistent."

He describes himself as "invigorated" by the battle and says his goal is to reclaim victory across the east coast. It's a far cry from when he was almost pushed out the door by former Nine boss Sam Chisholm.

"I think Sam tried to get rid of me pretty early in the piece, after about a year," he says, referring to Today's much-publicised ratings trough. "He was well within his rights to go 'This isn't quite working'."

Stefanovic wondered if Chisholm was right. Then he gave himself a mental slap. He was an experienced journalist, he reminded himself, working his way up from the graveyard shift at Ten to being a foreign corespondent for Nine. He could feel himself becoming more relaxed during on-air banter; more polished as he transitioned between hard and soft stories.

"I just went, 'It doesn't matter what anyone says about me on social media. You're not going to shake my confidence.' And I don't mean arrogance, I mean confidence. I knew what I was good at and the other stuff, I would learn."

Stefanovic was a 15-year-old schoolboy when he decided to become a journalist. In his final year, he applied for every course in Brisbane. His back-up option was childhood education, inspired by the hit movie Kindergarten Cop, though he never thought he would be accepted. 

He was. Demand for journalism degrees soared that year, lifting the entry scores out of his reach. So he spent his first year of university studying child psychology and doing practice lessons with four-year-olds.

"It actually stood me in great stead, from a communication perspective," he says. "It's come in handy for stories I've done on 60 Minutes and Today."

He transferred to journalism the following year, earned his degree, and scoured the country for cadetships. No one was hiring. He picked up some overnight shifts with Ten and considered his options.

"Why don't you do a NIDA audition?" suggested his father, Alex. (It was Alex who instilled his love of classical music. While driving his son to school, he would put ABC Classic FM on the radio and play "guess the composer". This bored the boy senseless. Now, however, Stefanovic loves listening to classical music in his car.)

The young man took his father's advice, making it through a few rounds of NIDA auditions. Though he didn't make the final cut, he was encouraged to re-apply the next year.

When WIN offered him a job in Rockhampton, he didn't hesitate to ditch the auditions.

"I've always wanted to be a journalist and that's never really changed," he says.

Most journalists do not get photographed taking their children to the park, though.

"I'm fair game," he reasons. "I have a great job with great money and that's the trade-off. But not my kids. I won't let my kids have cameras in their faces. I've put a stop to that before."

As he was leaving a pub recently, a man approached him. They began chatting, but the man cut him off. "Have you slept with Lisa?" he asked. 

Stefanovic looked down. The man was filming the encounter on his phone.

"People deliberately try to wind you up to provoke a reaction," he says. "There's more and more of that happening and I really hate it."

In the scheme of things, though, real-life trolls are a minor annoyance.

"When Tracy Grimshaw left Today, she said, 'Karl, you will understand this one day: It is the best presenting job in Australia.' 

"Since then, we've interviewed prime ministers, we've done eight hours straight on breaking stories, and we have fun, too. She was right. It is the best job."

The bill, please

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