KORTNEY WILSON

Masters of Flip & Making It Home

By Jay Cooper

If you watch HGTV, you are very aware of the talented Kortney Wilson from Masters of Flip and Making It Home shows. She is not just a TV pro with a smiling face and quick wit but also an accomplished entrepreneur, Canadian actor, country singer/songwriter, real estate professional, designer, television personality, mother AND a proud Canadian?

KW: Yes, I am, and that’s why I was excited to do this interview. I’m in North York right now and have been shooting for the last 6 weeks here.

ATOTK: What is your connection to the Kawarthas?

KW: I have many friends that have cottages there to visit and it inspired me to buy a cottage in Kentucky as I’m a dual citizen.

ATOTK: History lesson. You were born in Windsor Ontario?

KW: I was, but at 3 months old my family moved to Sudbury, which I loved, and I started doing musical theatre up there. When we moved to the Kitchener area when I was 13, I continued with productions in the Kitchener/Guelph area and most notably as Annie when I was 16, before I moved to Nashville. So many amazing memories of those times and knew I wanted to pursue a career in music and entertainment.

ATOTK: Were the rest of the family also performers?

KW: No, not at al. One of my siblings is a paramedic, another is a hockey coach and another is a teacher. None of them play an instrument, including my parents. It was just something I had and was a part of me. ATOTK: How did you get into being a musician? KW: My parents put me in piano lessons at a young age because I would sit and try to learn songs I heard by ear and got very good at it. Not your traditional age to start since I was about 10, but it is the one thing that propelled me in my musical career. When I went to Nashville, I became a songwriter and didn’t really need to read music as much. ATOTK: How did the Nashville connection happen? KW: There weren’t any connections. My parents were not in the music industry. But what they did do was take me around Ontario to these competitions in the summers at festivals and fairs because that’s what I loved to do. I won a National Event at the Western Fair in London, Ontario. One of the judges, who taught music at Fanshawe College, said to my mother, “You’re daughter is very good and she needs to go to Nashville”. I had coffee with him a year later and he said, “You’re going.” I had no clue how to get there or what I was doing but I had to go. I had a chat with my parents in December of ‘97 and told them I was going. They said, “Where are you going to live and what are you going to do?” My response was that I have no idea. (laughs) I had $300 and a car, but my mother said “just hold on until February and I will drive you myself,” which I was so thankful for looking back. I was given the name of another struggling Canadian songwriter to look up when I got there, which I did, and he and his girlfriend, Margaret, invited me to stay with them. There was also Victoria Banks (successful singer/songwriter) and my future husband, Dave Wilson, staying there. Everyone had side gigs to pay bills and Margaret was an incredible painter. She just happened to be just painting walls at an entertainment lawyers’ office. She took my demo tape with her to play for him. That was 6 days after I got to Nashville,and he wanted to meet me the next day.

KORTNEY WILSON

ATOTK: That’s when you changed your last name from Galerno to Kayle?

KW: Well, clearly I wasn’t up on my vegetables to pick the last name Kayle. (laughs) So just imagine - she dropped me off at his office, I’m 18 years old and green as anything. He proceeds to drive me all over Nashville introducing me to people. There was Little Texas’ manager, publishers and the last one was Star Struck Entertainment, which was Reba McEntire’s building. I met Reba’s husband and producer and I’ll never forget when they said, “Sing for me.” I did, and they said, “Great, we will have the paperwork ready for you tomorrow.” It was an amazing time in my life. I signed my first record deal with Lyric Street from the demos from Star Struck. Although it didn’t last forever as I went in and out of other record deals. I came so very close many times to really making it big. So at that point I really felt that it was time to move on. I met with the president of Lyric Street and said I will fulfill my obligation for the last shows but that would be it. I played my last show in New York opening for Rascal Flatts, between the Twin Towers 5 days before they came down on 9/11.

ATOTK: You were also on the soap opera, One Life to Live?

KW: Yes, I did a whole summer of filming and it was a wonderful experience and also one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I have huge respect for actors that film at that pace and with a new script everyday.

ATOTK: So how did the house flipping start?

KW: By that time, Dave and I were in and out of record deals and we had a house. We also just had Jett, our son, and we were quite honestly broke. (laughs) We put our home up for sale to acquire another place. To save money, at Christmas we came back to Canada to visit family and Dave turned the heat off in our house while we were away. There was an uncommon cold snap for Nashville and the pipes froze. The people that were buying our home walked in on three feet of water. So we took the insurance money, fixed it up and sold it. And that was the start. We bought another little house and thought we could make $10K on it, while Dave was working as a waiter. We made just under $25K, so he quit his job and we became flippers to support us and our music habit. At that time, we were flipping one or two a year, but only one at a time.

ATOTK: So then you acquired your Real Estate license?

KW: Well, I was tired and burned out and wanted to pour myself into something else. Dave replied that I was selling out. I did put the work in and became the brokerage’s rookie of the year, although I cried every time going to and from classes. (laughs) Right after I got my license, HGTV came calling about a show we had pitched them before, which was turned down. Hence, Masters of Flip was born. I’m still a Realtor with a small team in Nashville, still flipping houses and still doing it on TV. (laughs)

ATOTK: Was it really your money that was used to purchase and flip these homes?

KW: It was our money. It was entirely on us and very stressful and hard to pull off. We went from two flips a year to ten for the show. The first season was the hardest, yet it the most enjoyable because it was very raw. We would shoot all day and be told what are we filming the next day, but we hadn’t even had a chance to go check on the other builds. At the start we were doing everything ourselves. By the second season we had more of a team with project managers and people to get me samples. I was still in control of all the design aspects, but we really needed some help.

ATOTK: So did Masters of Flip end because you didn’t want to be in that game anymore?

KW: By the end of the third season, we were done. Not that we didn’t want to flip anymore, but it was just getting too hard with the filming and trying to manage things to get done. But the show was doing so well that we decided to do season four. So many amazing memories though. And a lot of the crew from Masters followed us to Making it Home - a lot of them are like family. This also lead to so many opportunities with my www.kortandco.com website, which is an amazing accomplishment.

ATOTK: With the housing market what it is now, it would be difficult to even find homes to flip?

KW: True, when we exited the show, it was so hard to even find a property in Nashville. Even after the first season the network wanted 20 homes and the answer was, we can’t even find that many and we were contractually obligated to flip as many as we said we could, so we settled on half. That’s when Making it Home came along. It was a dream of mine, where we didn’t have to buy and flip, just do what we do best in the reno and design.

ATOTK: Best Gig?

KW: Dave and I did a Saturday morning talk show on CMT called Kortney and Dave by Request and we loved it! It was just so much fun.

ATOTK: Worst Gig?

KW: We were hired to do this country club to perform after dinner. Amazing intro and 15 seconds later, when we started singing, people decided they were just going to keep on talking to each other. So worst gig, yes, but we laughed our asses off. We just made lyrics up. We played the same song three times in a row and nobody noticed. (laughs)

ATOTK: I thank you so much for your time. It’s been such a pleasure.

KW: You’re very welcome Jay. I can’t wait to have a copy of the magazine!

Photos by Kathy Thomas