Kelli Kenyon: A Girl’s Dream Becomes a Woman’s Vision

Don’t let her perfectly-applied makeup or sweet Carolina accent fool you. “I grew up knowing how to maintain a car and bleed brakes with the best of them,” said Kelli Kenyon with a laugh. This southern belle isn’t afraid to get her hands a little dirty—whether that requires a shop visit to help sort through a customer’s dusty, age-old returns or assisting her husband in disassembling an entire dash/console to make way for a new stereo system. There’s no project too big or too small for Kenyon. She’ll lend a helping hand wherever needed.

Girl’s Got Grit

Kelli Kenyon can talk shop with the most experienced in the biz and has a host of industry nods to prove it. She was awarded the Keystone Automotive Sales Person of the Year in 2008 and 2013. Once the sales team leader at the Greensboro, NC call center, Kenyon is now the Sales Manager of Commercial Truck and Van—a position that allows her to serve as the company point-of-contact for the professional market segment. Talented, insightful, focused, and committed, Kenyon’s the kind of employee who gets the job done right the first time—some of the many values industry veterans most admire about her.

Kenyon is a career aftermarket professional and proud member of the Keystone team since March 1999. And her passion for anything automotive is genetic. “My grandfather served in WWII and one of my favorite pictures is of him and a ‘32 Chevrolet. My father worked on cars from the time he was probably 12-13 years old. It’s what he knows; it’s what he came from. He was a mason by trade, but would come home and eat supper and then go to the garage directly behind the house every single night. He just loves to piddle. He’d rather work on a car, fix and mess with it, than do anything else,” said Kenyon.

"He was a mason by trade, but would come home and eat supper and then go to the garage directly behind the house every single night. He just loves to piddle. He’d rather work on a car, fix and mess with it, than do anything else,” said Kenyon.

She remembers a yard full of project vehicles just waiting to be restored and more than a few that were resurrected to greatness. Among them, a ‘33 Ford purchased in 1962 and crafted into a street rod. A ‘64 GTO show-n-go that was drag raced at the Piedmont and Rockingham strips in NC. And a ‘26 Dodge Brothers Dodge that was picked up from an old buddy, then revived with a new engine and tranny.

Kenyon's father has always had a full yard of project cars.

A Family Affair

The lifestyle runs deep in Kelli Kenyon’s DNA and the fact that her husband is like her father is no coincidence. “You don’t call a plumber. Ya figure it out and do it yourself.” And they apply that same mentality to all things automotive. Today, she and her husband fill that same childhood home with new memories. Although, “a pile of cars and the garage is still there, as well as another (family) garage down the road,” she chuckled. In true Kenyon fashion, “One day I said to him, ‘Daddy, if you don’t fix them and drive them, then I’m going to fix them and drive them!'”

Top of the list: a ‘53 Hudson Hornet, her father’s first car at age 16, and a ‘34 International truck currently up on the lift, a treasured ride that Kenyon recalls looking at in their backyard since she was a little girl back to the 1970s. As for Daddy, well, “these days, his hardest decision in the world is what he’s going to drive that morning,” she said.

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