Amy Grant Shares the Story Behind Her Love for Vince Gill

Singer Amy Grant is opening up about her long-lasting love story with country music star Vince Gill and the kindness that first drew her to him.

Grant, 65, recently appeared on the Human School Podcast, where she spoke openly about how her relationship with Gill began.

“We got together because he was the kindest person I ever met and I was so attracted to him. I fell in love with him,” Grant said. “I couldn’t un-know his kindness.”

Grant and Gill first met in 1993 while working together. At the time, both were married to other people. Grant said that meeting Gill changed the way she saw relationships.

“I couldn’t un-know what it felt like to feel that kind of respect,” she explained.

Grant said Gill’s kindness and authenticity “tilted my world on its axis.” However, their relationship did not lead to marriage right away. She said it took seven years, including what she described as “a long five years of slowly derailing,” before they eventually married.

The couple tied the knot in March 2000.

Learning to Live Side by Side

Looking back on their marriage, Grant described it as a powerful learning experience.

“I would just say that marriage is the giant rock tumbler,” she said. “It’s been such a great experience of sort of navigating another human being — and his life is his life. Our lives are beside each other.”

Grant said the two have faced very different experiences throughout their lives, including health challenges and career opportunities.

“The physical things that have happened to me, they have not happened to him. The opportunities that have come to him, they have not come to me,” she said.

For Grant, the respect she felt for Gill from the beginning has remained one of the most important parts of their relationship.

“That respect I felt in him from the beginning has been one of the most wonderful things, to learn to live respectfully alongside somebody else,” she said.

A Relationship Neither Planned

In November 2024, Grant and Gill spoke with PEOPLE about how their relationship developed. Grant said there was no carefully planned romance between them.

“It was like life orchestrated that we kept crossing paths,” she said.

She also reflected on the challenges faced by both of their families, including their first marriages and the families they built together.

“What we’ve experienced is just so much grace and forgiveness for each other and for our first families and our second families,” Grant said. “It is possible to reconcile. It’s possible to mend fences.”

Gill has also spoken about the first moment he noticed Grant. For him, it was her smile.

“That’s all I can remember. It was a staggering smile that just stopped me in my tracks,” Gill said. “And that had never happened to me before like that.”

Gill’s Advice After Grant’s Brain Injury

Grant has also credited Gill with helping her through one of the most difficult periods of her life.

In 2022, Grant suffered a brain injury after a bicycle accident. During her recovery, she struggled with changes in her response time and feared that she might never fully return to her old self.

In April, while appearing on NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin, Grant recalled a conversation with Gill during that difficult time.

“I just remember saying to Vince, ‘What if this is all I get back? What if this is it?’” she said.

Grant described feeling as though the rest of the world was having a conversation while she was far away from it.

Gill responded with advice that Grant has never forgotten.

“Amy, life happens to every one of us every day,” he told her.

He reminded her that even a highly skilled musician could suddenly suffer a stroke and lose the ability to play an instrument.

“All you do is you just take the hand you’re dealt that day and live the life that you get,” Grant recalled him saying.

For Grant, those words reflected the same quality that first attracted her to Gill decades ago: his ability to meet life with kindness, honesty and perspective.