A few years back, my wife went with me to the Knotts show in SoCal. She wasn't too excited about Cobras but went along anyway. After an hour or so of looking at Cobras, she noticed a really nice dark green one that was being cleaned by a woman. The two of them struck up a conversation, next thing I know my wife is asking all kinds of questions and getting back very positive answers. That was it, she was hooked. The next thing she said to me was "can we paint our Cobra dark green?". My answer "any colour you want dear".
Try to get her involved in the process, life will be a lot easier that way, at least it worked for me.
By the way, our Cobra is dark green with pearl white strips.
Wayne