Weird: Keyboard and mouse stop working

A few months ago I started having issues with my Mac Mini where the keyboard and/or mouse wouldn’t work on first boot unless I physically disconnected and reconnected them. The lights would light up on the devices to show they had power, but they simply wouldn’t work until I disconnected/reconnected them. This didn’t happen every boot, which is even weirder. I’ve been using Macs for many, many years and have never had this problem. I’ve had this Mac for about 5 years now, and as stated, this problem just started. I tried troubleshooting step 1, cussing them out, but that didn’t work. This is a Mac, not Windoze, so I won’t do step 2, which is kicking it with your other foot when you reboot. Any ideas?