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Crazy in Love Vince Gill and Amy Grant

Nashville s favorite couple endured heartache and pain — and found happiness

Pop star Amy Grant and country music legend Vince Gill are one of music's strongest, most romantic couples Jim Wright , the legendary dive bar where bygone Grand Ole Opry stars wrote hit songs on tabletops, Contemporary Christian pop singer Amy Grant warms the stage, crooning a sexy ballad she wrote with her husband of 11 years, Country Hall of Famer Vince Gill. True love, making up for lost time
True love waiting
Your love, that's finally mine…* Get instant access to members-only products and hundreds of discounts, a free second membership, and a subscription to AARP the Magazine. Gill strums an acoustic guitar. "Keep goin', baby," he says. Tootsie's is such a hallowed hole that even the rich and famous drop in to play for free once in a while. Minutes later Gill and Grant nestle in a corner booth, holding hands. Gill leans in closer to his wife, who's wearing a striped tunic and a pair of well-worn cowboy boots, and says," You know what? You look fabulous right now." Beyond Tennessee, other husband-and-wife teams — Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman, say, or Tim McGraw and Faith Hill — grab headlines as Nashville's most visible twosomes. But in Music City, insiders tell you differently: The appealingly understated Vince Gill, 54, and Amy Grant, 50, are this town's most romantic, true power couple. Now, as Grant has just wrapped up a national tour and Gill prepares to release a new, all-originals CD, the couple find themselves reflecting on the long and painful journey that has brought them to what they each call the best time of their lives. With his luminous tenor, and guitar licks so inventive that Eric Clapton studies his moves, Gill, who has accumulated 20 Grammy awards and 18 Country Music Association trophies, arrived on the music scene "just dripping talent," says close friend and fellow musician Rodney Crowell. But it was Gill's marriage to Grant (who has six Grammys and 22 Dove Awards for gospel music to her credit) that grounded him in a profound way. "Sometimes one person in your life puts that final block in place, and you step into the ownership of who you are," explains Crowell. "That was a positive merging right there — two great, fun-loving, accessible people. They're the perfect couple and parents, fully realized human beings and philanthropists. And there's absolutely no pretension about them, which is very rare." Theirs is the story of how the prince of country and the princess of gospel risked their reputations to become the king and queen of hearts. "It was really hard to get there," Gill says. "That seemed to make it matter even more." * "True Love" lyrics written by Vince Gill & Amy Grant.

Tabernacles & Taverns

"I apologize for being in yesterday's clothes," Grant says the next morning, entering the den of the couple's plantation-style home in an exclusive section of Nashville. "I got up early to take Corrina to school." Chances are, the Gills' 10-year-old daughter has the school's most glamorous mother. Corrina's father, comfy in a T-shirt and jeans, clearly would concur. "What's funny is I see old photographs of Amy in her 20s, and she's much prettier these days." A laugh. "She still does it for me." Despite their attraction, Gill and Grant initially wondered if they were a match, he fretting that she might find him too rough-edged, and she worrying he'd find her too quiet. And their upbringings were different. Gill grew up in Norman, Oklahoma, the son of a judge who was, says Gill, "more red-dirt Okie than big-shot lawyer." Gill's family were party people, "very matter-of-fact." While Grant grew up in the Church of Christ, singing for God on Sunday and on Wednesday nights, Gill played beer joints, less concerned with the afterlife than honky-tonk heaven. He was a wounded child, close to his mother and born with crossed eyes. (He had two surgeries while young, and to this day his left eye wanders when he's tired. Two years ago he began wearing glasses nearly full-time.) When Vince was 10, his older half brother, Bob, suffered a head injury in a car crash, and struggled the rest of his life. (He died of a heart attack in 1993.) Young Vince, to ease his pain, learned to hide himself behind humor or to retreat inside the sorrowful sounds of bluegrass and country music. Grant, the youngest of four children born to a Nashville radiation oncologist and his wife, was a dutiful child, albeit with a sharp sense of humor. From the time she was a small girl, riding horses on the family farm, she knew that her great-grandparents had willed the property, worth $13 million, to the faith-based Lipscomb University. "That way, it would go to what they believed in and not to us," says Grant. "My family very intentionally taught me proactive giving."

A Soul Connection

Flowers & Gifts 25% off sitewide and 30% off select items See more Flowers & Gifts offers > Grant's pain was evident to her sister Nuismer: "Sometimes when people try to stay in [a marriage] with unresolved issues, they begin to shut down. It's like you see them dying." Around the holidays of that year, Grant and Gill played three events together in one night. "I knew from the tips of my toes that he was unlike anybody I had ever met," Grant remembers, "and that I related to him on such a cellular level. I was just so overwhelmed by him as a person that I finally came up behind him and wrapped my arms around him and said, 'I've needed to do this all night.' " The feeling was mutual, but Gill held on to his decorum. "He went, 'Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!' " Grant recalls. "It was weird. It was all caught on film, too." Not long after, Grant invited him to record a duet, "House of Love," that friends and critics alike agreed was magical. Grant's obsession with Gill caught her by surprise. She incorporates prayer and worship into her daily life, and had become, at 19, the burgeoning Contemporary Christian movement's most celebrated singer. Michael Blanton, part of her management team for 30 years, instantly saw what was happening. He and Grant sat up late one night in the middle of a tour and had a heart-to-heart. "Amy, what are you going to do?" he asked. "What are you going to do?" "I could definitely see that she had made a soul connection that was different from anything she'd ever had," Blanton says. "She was working out the details of that in her mind, going, 'This is where I am in reality in my life, but now, how do I put this thing together?' It was an incredibly tough struggle. It brought into question everything about her faith and her desire to be a woman of integrity." At first, Grant and Gill did nothing but brood. He wrote gorgeous songs of longing — "Whenever You Come Around," "When Loves Finds You" — that advanced his career but not his well-being. In private, Grant noted on a legal pad each time she was around Gill. "[Vince] just made a profound mark on me every time and confirmed there was somebody out there who gets me," Grant says. There was no cheating, Gill insists, and neither spoke to the other about leaving their spouse. "We were both married, and though we were crazy about each other, we thought, 'Well, that's not our life.' " Friends sensed the attraction, found it painful to watch the two dancing around each other, and offered advice. "The hard truth was that we never thought for a minute that we would wind up together," says Gill. To that end, Grant and Chapman sought marital counseling. One day in April of 1997, Grant was surprised to read in the paper that Gill had announced he was getting a divorce. Chapman, who by then was well aware of Grant's infatuation with Gill, glanced at the headline — it was on the front page — and turned to his wife, commenting that he was grateful someone had finally made the first move. "[It was] awful. Awful! Killed me for him," Grant remembers. "How painful to be married to somebody you know is so captivated by another human being." The following year, Grant and Chapman sought divorce mediation. "Not being able to fix things took a toll," says Nuismer. "The family was fractured." In 1999, Grant moved out. Soon after her divorce became final, she and Gill started dating. "It was hard," Gill admits. "The kids, the popularity of our lives, a lot of tongues waggin'." Luckily, the local press was kind — and at the time both of their ex-spouses refrained from discussing the split. The relationship deepened quickly, and in March of 2000, Gill and Grant married in an outdoor ceremony on her property. From the beginning each started improving the other — Grant softening Gill's ire, which has often flared on the golf course, and Gill striving to keep Grant focused. ("She can't multitask," he says. "She'll start the bathwater and then forget it.") AARP NEWSLETTERS %{ newsLetterPromoText }% %{ description }% Subscribe More on entertainment AARP NEWSLETTERS %{ newsLetterPromoText }% %{ description }% Subscribe AARP VALUE & MEMBER BENEFITS See more Health & Wellness offers > See more Flights & Vacation Packages offers > See more Finances offers > See more Health & Wellness offers > SAVE MONEY WITH THESE LIMITED-TIME OFFERS