Brandon Beane began his football career as an intern with the Panthers.

Beane was a three-sport star in his hometown of Norwood, North Carolina.

Beane and Bills coach Sean McDermott worked together for six years in Carolina.

Imagine having this conversation with the woman you’re about to marry.

“Honey, I’m going to turn down a full-time entry-level job in journalism that pays about $30,000 annually to start with benefits, so I can go work a $5-an-hour internship for the Carolina Panthers.”

That happened back in 1998, and new Buffalo Bills general manager Brandon Beane lived to laugh about it.

“My wife didn’t kick me out for that, so that was pretty good,” Beane said recently, recalling that potential deal-breaking moment when the just-out-of-college soon-to-be-newlyweds were preparing to start a life for themselves.

Beane knew then and there he’d picked the right woman, and as it turned out, Hayley Beane’s support and her patience certainly paid off. Her husband used that middling internship to set in place the foundation upon which he has built a successful and lucrative career, one that now has him sitting in a corner office at One Bills Drive getting paid millions of dollars by Terry and Kim Pegula to revitalize their forever flopping football franchise.

“When I met her, I was dating a gal back from where I went to high school,” said Beane. “But we dated through college (at UNC-Wilmington) and got married. She quickly figured out what a sports nut I was, everything I was playing, and obviously SportsCenter’s on or whatever game’s on (television).”

Hayley was a schoolteacher, basically the breadwinner in the union at the start as the sports nut was still trying to figure out what career he wanted to pursue. He had entered college as an English major thinking he might want to become a teacher, then pretty quickly switched over to communications, and that’s what he earned his degree in.

He’d entertained visions of coaching football, but he gave up on that idea and focused on just getting a job in sports. Upon graduation in 1998, he worked a four-week summer internship with the Panthers when the franchise was only 4 years old. When that concluded, he interviewed for a full-season internship with the Panthers’ communications department at the same time he was being presented an opportunity to write for Sports Business Journal.

“They had an office in Charlotte,” he said. “I was interviewed for it and was offered it. But I had also interviewed for the season internship for Carolina, and I just kept holding (SBJ) off and trying to speed it up with Carolina, and finally got it. So I turned down a $30,000-a-year job for minimum wage, no benefits.”

Hayley may have raised an eyebrow, but she stuck by her man. “She’s been a trooper,” Beane said. “She didn’t know what she was signing up for, to be quite honest.”

Beane was born in the tiny town of Norwood, North Carolina, located about 45 minutes east of Charlotte, population these days less than 2,400. His father, Bob, sold trusses and brick to home builders, and his mother, Cyndi, was a CPA who owned her own firm.

Tax season is grueling with all the long hours, and Beane can certainly relate to the time his mom put in because during football season, NFL executives log some legendarily long days. The thing is, she always thrived on it, and Brandon is the same way.

“She is one of those people that is stressed if she’s not stressed, if that makes sense,” he said. “She can’t just sit still. My wife gets on me every time I go home. She’s like, ‘You say you need a break, but then you’re out there cleaning the garage out or something.’ I’m a perfectionist. I’m wired a lot like my mother, in a lot of ways. My dad was a competitor. I probably got that from him.”

Oh, Brandon was a competitor all right. He was a star athlete at South Stanley High on the football field, the basketball court, and the golf course, a layout called Piney Point on the outskirts of town. There was a fire that burned in him, and the only thing worse than the severe knee injury he suffered that cost him his senior football and basketball seasons was losing. That was just about the most awful thing in the world. He didn’t lose often, but when he did, he didn’t handle it well. There would be tirades on the field or court, thrown clubs on the course.

“Everything I’ve had to do, I’ve always said, ‘I’m going to have to figure out a way to do it better than everybody else and I’m going to outwork everybody,’ ” said Beane, whose diminutive 5-foot-8 stature may have something to do with that feisty attitude. “And that’s the mentality. That’s from where I grew up. Nothing’s given, everything’s earned. And that’s the mentality I’m bringing here to the Bills. That’s what I expect from the staff, the players, the coaches. Sean (McDermott) and I, that’s why we’re so aligned.”

McDermott, who worked six years with Beane in Carolina and has the same ultra-competitive, grind-it-out personality, has great respect for his friend and colleague.

“I certainly came up one way, he came up in a similar fashion through this business,” said McDermott. “When you look at his foundation that he’s been able to build for around 19 years — coming up through a solid organization in Carolina with great leadership and Mr. Richardson and Dave Gettleman and Ron Rivera. So he’s been trained the right way, he’s earned everything he’s gotten and those are qualities, to me, that are very attractive.”

Beane didn’t last long writing press releases for the Panthers. He was driven to seek more responsibility, and former Panthers general manager Marty Hurney saw that. He moved Beane into the football operations department, and this is where Beane began learning the business side of football.

He was in charge of the Panthers training camp, then he began working with budgets and travel itineraries, and pretty soon he was in charge of football ops with an eye on the big office, general manager. Hurney was fired in 2012, and owner Jerry Richardson had Beane finish that season as interim GM, but ultimately, Richardson hired the more experienced Gettleman in 2013.

Gettleman, who once worked as a scout for the Bills in the 1980s, was 62 at the time and Beane, disappointed that he wasn’t taking over, felt he’d have a chance to get the job a few years down the road. He was promoted to assistant GM in 2015, but at the end of 2016, he was still stuck in neutral, so when the Bills’ opportunity came up following the draft, he took the leap and left North Carolina for the first time in his life.

Hayley wasn’t sure what to expect in Buffalo, but as soon as she started investigating the situation, she bought in and thought it would be a great place to raise her two sons, 14-year-old Tyson and 12-year-old Wes.

“We had some neighbors that were from Buffalo, and the more people she talked to, she was like, ‘I’m good with this if this works out,’ ” said Beane. “One of her close friends who’s from Buffalo started telling her about Wegmans — ‘You’ve got to go to Wegmans.’ Just all these different things. But she was on board. She knew that I wasn’t just going to run out of Carolina if I didn’t think it was the perfect scenario for me, for the family.”

As it turned out, Gettleman was unexpectedly fired last week, and had Beane stayed put, he very likely might have gotten the job he’d always wanted. Instead, he’s in Buffalo, facing head on the challenge of bringing the Bills back from irrelevance.

“He’s well thought of by the people in Carolina,” said former Bills GM and Pro Football Hall of Famer Bill Polian. “He’s well thought of by people around the league. He has extensive experience on all of the administrative sides of the game. Salary cap, player acquisition, rules, roster. The most important thing is he and Sean know each other. They obviously have a working relationship. That wasn’t the case with Doug Whaley with any of the three coaches, really, under which he served or with whom he served I should say. So this will be a happy marriage and one that bodes well for the Bills.”

And Beane, of course, knows all about happy marriages.

MAIORANA@Gannett.com