Amy Grant, or also known as Vince Gill’s wife, has built herself a long and successful career. Grant first popped into the music scene as a fresh-faced teenager with Christian music hits like “Father’s Eyes” and “El Shaddai”. After a few years, she started to transcend boundaries from Christian to Pop, making her a crossover sensation and a household name.
Early Life: Who is Amy Grant?
Amy Grant was born as Amy Lee Grant on November 25, 1960 to parents Burton Paine and Gloria Grant in Augusta, Georgia. She is the youngest of four sisters and the great granddaughter of well-known Nashville philanthropist and founder of Life and Casualty Insurance Company, A.M. Burton.
In 1967, Grant and her family settled in Nashville, Tennessee, where she became a member of Ashwood Church of Christ alongside her grandfather. As a student, she attended an all-girls school named Harpeth Hall School before she went to Furman University. And then, she transferred to Vanderbilt University, where she joined the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. At the time, Grant was also pursuing music and releasing albums, and so she ultimately had to drop out of college to do music full-time.
Career: ‘The Queen of Christian Pop’
Amy Grant entered the professional music scene at a very young age. Just five weeks before her 16th birthday, she received her first offer for a recording contract. As the story went, Grant wrote her first song, “Mountain Top,” in 1976. And aside from her public performance at Harpeth Hall School, she also recorded a demo with church youth leader Brown Bannister. When Bannister was dubbing the demo, the owner of the recording studio Chris Christian heard it and played it for World Records.
She recorded her first album in 1977, and a year later, she performed her first ticketed concert. Grant enjoyed the success of her Christian hits until in the mid-1980s, when she decided to broaden her audience and cross over into mainstream pop. This decision inevitably created issues, and it was frowned upon by many Christian fans. But the truth was she never really moved on from the genre as she wanted to become the first-ever Christian singer-songwriter who was also a successful contemporary pop singer.
And true enough, she did. Her 1991 album ‘Heart in Motion’ earned chart success with her track “Baby Baby” hitting number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Other Amy Grant songs on the album also charted high, making it her best-selling album with over five million copies sold. In 2002, she went back to her roots with her album ‘Legacy…Hymns and Faith.’
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Marriage and Family: Meet Amy Grant’s Husband and Kids
RELATED: Amy Grant and Vince Gill: The Story of Love That Inspires
In 1982, Grant married her fellow Christian musician Gary Chapman, and they had three kids together – Matthew, Millie, and Sarah. But after almost two decades together, they divorced. A year after her divorce, she married country singer-songwriter, Vince Gill. Together, they formed a blended family of six (with Vince Gill’s teenage daughter Jenny) before the couple welcomed their first and only child together, Corrina.
Current Life and Net Worth: What is Amy Grant doing now?
In recent news, Amy Grant had an open-heart surgery for her congenital heart condition known as partial anomalous pulmonary venous return or PAPVR. The surgery was successful, and now she is back on the road touring. With all of her album and tour earnings, Amy Grant has an estimated net worth of $55 million.
But aside from music, Amy Grant and husband Vince Gill have been directing their efforts in supporting worthy philanthropic causes.
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