Amy Grant is a successful Christian pop artist, but did you know she’s been married twice? Before she hosts the ‘CMA Country Christmas’ special, get to know both her ex and her current husband.
“Baby, Baby” singer Amy Grant, 63, got her start as a Christian musician but gained a great deal of notoriety in the 1980s and 1990s after diving into pop music. Her first album debuted in 1977, while her most recent — a Christmas album called Tennessee Christmas — dropped in 2016. Fittingly, Amy is set to host the 2024 CMA Country Christmas special, alongside Trisha Yearwood on Tuesday, December 3. Amy is also set to perform along with other country stars like Cody Johnson, Ashley McBryde, and more.
Aside from being a beloved singer and songwriter, Amy is a doting mother of four kids, whom she had through two marriages. Her husband, Vince Gill , and their children will surely be cheering her on as she takes the stage for the holiday special. Read on to learn all about her current husband and her marriage to her ex-husband, Gary Chapman.
Amy & Gary Chapman
Amy and Gary, now 66, met when she was a freshman at Furman University. Gary, a singer and songwriter himself, was immediately intrigued by her and asked her out on several occasions. She declined. However, Amy began to see Gary in a different light once her management team added him as an opening act on her tour ahead of her sophomore year of college, according to the 2003 biography of her life by Bob Millard, Amy Grant: The Life of a Pop Star.
In an interview for the biography, Amy said that their affection for one another is a natural result of two young kids (Amy was 19 at the time and Gary was 22), spending a large amount of time together. “We could have been any two kids out doing what we both loved to do. The results would have been the same,” she theorized.
Amy, who has been referred to as “The Queen of Christian Pop”, later on, admitted that they “kind of fell in love”, but she felt it was nearly planned out. “I guess I didn’t realize he was courting,” she said. “I thought we were great friends, that’s all. He became a part of my family. They took him in because they thought he was just a companion to their little girl. It was pretty sneaky.”
Amy and Gary married in 1982, although Amy = said their union was rough from the start. “It had been rocky from the get-go. I’d been holding steady for 15 years in something that was not easy to hold steady,” she recalled to AARP in 2011.
Some of the stress in their relationship came directly from Amy’s success. There was talk that Gary was jealous of her success, and in a 1997 interview with Texas Monthly, he admitted to it. He frankly recalled performing in between Amy’s sets at her concerts and seeing the crowd die down and ignore him while tending to their personal conversations. During a 1985 performance, he even stopped a song to ask the crowd if he was “boring” them. “I had a lot of reasons to be angry,” he confessed. “I don’t think any of them were valid, but they were to me at the time. I know that I felt overlooked.”
There were darker demons Gary had to deal with during the marriage though: drug use. “I had two distinctly different lives. Different sets of friends, different likes, dislikes, actions, everything,” he said about his use of cocaine and marijuana.
Amy and Gary stayed together for 17 years and welcomed three kids into the world. In 1999, their divorce was finalized, and Amy had given her heart to another man. In a 2001 feature for CCM magazine, Gary recalled that Amy had come to him in 1994 with the news that their marriage was over. “I don’t love you anymore,” he claimed she informed him. “You’re the biggest mistake I’ve ever made… I’ve given my heart to another man.”
Amy & Vince Gill
Amy and Vince, now 66, met while collaborating on a 1993 Christmas special. “I knew from the tips of my toes that he was unlike anybody I had ever met, and that I related to him on such a cellular level,” she gushed to AARP of their instant connection. “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.’”
Of course, when they first met, Amy was with Gary and Vince was with his wife, Janis Oliver. “We were both married, and though we were crazy about each other, we thought, ‘Well that’s not our life,’” Vince recalled to AARP about their undeniable connection but harsh realities. “The hard truth was that we never thought for a minute that we would end up together.”
Vince also ended his marriage in 1999 and he and Amy walked down the aisle in 2000. They have been happily married since and welcomed a daughter, Corrina, in 2001. Corrina is also a singer herself. After Amy suffered a bike accident in 2022, she joined her dad on stage to sing “When Amy Prays,” per People. Luckily, Amy recovered enough from that accident to be able to perform her and Vince’s annual Christmas concerts that winter.
The lovebirds have continued to work together throughout their marriage and are known for their yearly Christmas concerts. As she prepared for her and Vince’s 12-date run of shows at the iconic Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tenn. in 2021, Amy raved about performing with her man. “There’s not a better place to make music. I love doing all those shows with Vince,” she told ABC News. “No kidding, I fall in love with him all over again every year, just how he plays, his wit.”
Vince has stayed very active in music. Earlier in 2023, he released the album Sweet Memories with Paul Franklin. He also dueted the classic “Blue Christmas” with fellow country singer Giada Valenti in November 2023.
Amy’s Four Kids
As mentioned above, Amy welcomed four kids throughout her two marriages. With Gary, she welcomed her son, Matthew, in 1987 and her firstborn daughter, Gloria, in 1989. She had her second daughter, Sarah, with Gary in 1992. In 2001, Amy welcomed her third daughter, Corrina, with Vince. Corrina left home for college in 2019, and Amy revealed what it was like to have an empty house. “I’m sleeping like a teenager!” she told Closer Weekly. “I want to experience life and not have a work agenda. I’m going to take my Airstream Bambi trailer coast to coast, meet people and just celebrate being alive!”
Gloria, who goes by Millie, walked down the aisle in April 2019 and gave birth to her first child, daughter Penelope, in Jan. 2022. “It is hard to believe that same 6-week-old girl who inspired the lyrics to ‘Baby Baby’ is now a beautiful married woman,” Amy told PEOPLE at the time of Millie’s wedding. “Her life has given us a lot of reasons to dance and celebrate through the years!”
2019 was certainly a busy year for Amy. Not only did she have her youngest daughter move away to college and oldest daughter tie the knot, her middle daughter, Sarah, got married as well! “When my daughter Sarah married on November 9, she came down the aisle flanked by her father, Gary Chapman, on one side and her stepfather, Vince Gill, on the other,” the “Simple Things” hitmaker told Closer Weekly in 2019. “All I could think was, Phew, life looks all kinds of ways!”
