A Highly Calibrated Meeting of Minds Under the Hood

In the classic comedy, My Cousin Vinny, actress Marisa Tomei steals the scenes with her encyclopedic knowledge of cars. It isn’t far from Greensboro’s own Kayla Mulisano, co-owner at Autologic of Greensboro.

She and Vincent Mulisano are not only a couple, they work shoulder-to-shoulder at Autologic, where they’ve built a following among car aficionados. (They frequently work on cars from as far as Charleston, S.C.) Vincent, the master technician, founded the business in 2007. Kayla is the service manager.

“We work differently,” Vincent says, each one playing to his or her strengths.

He insists that “car chicks” didn’t turn his head. But — when he first got to know Kayla, her mechanical aptitude appealed.

Vincent adds shyly, “She was drop dead gorgeous and she knew cars.” Falling for Kayla happened very, very fast in his telling.

Kayla met Vincent through her younger brother, but only in passing. In 2009, they began dating while she was working in BMW restoration at Korman Autoworks by day and taking college courses by night. “If I needed help on a car that none of my guys could figure out, he could help.”

“It started with a car thing. It began as just enjoying each other,” says Kayla. He admits he had serious thoughts about their relationship within six months. “It was pretty fast. I knew right off the bat,” he says.

In May of 2015 Kayla left Korman, joining Vincent at Autologic.

Well before then, by 2009, they were a couple. He began thinking about putting a ring on her finger, later spending months poring over the design with a friend who dealt in diamonds.

“I was the one, you had to hit me on the back of the head with a bat,” she says. “I liked his brain and his sense of humor. He made me laugh.”

“It was a whole bunch of everything all at once,” a clearly smitten Vincent says. “Okay, she’s gorgeous. She knows cars. She’s quick witted. Snaps back with jokes. Say something snarky and she has a reply. Laughs, smiles. Acts like a girl, and giggles.”

And he liked Kayla’s proclivity to change her hair color with the seasons, and her feminine aspect.

Not just another car chick.

But there was a shared romance with cars. Both have had personal project cars. Both did high performance driving (“racing” to mere mortals) events. For a long time, automobiles claimed a huge chunk of their lives. When they grew involved in animal rescue with greyhounds, they did less of those activities.

In 2011, Vincent planned his proposal. He called ahead to Bleu restaurant in Winston-Salem and asked to be seated in a certain place. To entice her to dress up, Vincent led Kayla to think they were meeting a valued friend and his wife. (“He’s like a father figure to me. She — Kayla— was very nervous about that.”)

“We get to Winston-Salem and the friend calls,” he says.

“Mysteriously calls as we’re getting out of the car,” she interjects, to cancel meeting them.

They were seated, ordered wine, and then, Kayla says, “He slapped a piece of bread out of my hand,” at which she explodes with laughter. Vincent was so nervous he admits he was struggling, trying to hold her attention while wrestling with the timing of the proposal — sabotaged by the arrival of the bread basket. He had a dreaded sense she would figure it all out and his surprise would be ruined.

“She was starting to feel something was going on and had a lot of nervous energy,” Vincent patiently explains. He absolutely couldn’t stall any longer. “So, I decided it was time.”

He got down on bended knee “as she was doing these nervous nibbles,” Vincent laughs. Kayla hadn’t even noticed his princely kneel. “She had missed me completely,” he says — until she didn’t. He pantomimes her spluttering and blowing the bread out of her mouth.

Then Kayla saw the ring.

He thought she’d say yes. “She said yes,” he says, smiling.

Five years later, they married at Topsail Island, October 26, 2016. In their wedding picture, they are standing in the sand, smiling hugely, with Elsha, an Irish wolfhound, at the forefront.

Officiant Reverend Skip did the honors, Kayla says.

“We were — soulmates — is an easy way to say it,” she says, “but we truly are.”