Outside it’s a drizzly
January afternoon
in Nashville.
But inside Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, 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 Music Hall of Famer Vince Gill.
True love, making up for lost time
True love waiting
Your love, that’s finally mine…*
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 appeal-
ingly 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 reflect-
ing 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 tro-phies, 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.”
Tabernacles & Taverns
“I APOLOGIZE FOR BEING in yesterday’s
clothes,” Grant says the next morning,
entering the den of the couple’s planta-
tion-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 pret-
tier these days.” A laugh. “She still does it for me.”
Despite their attraction, Gill and Grant initially won-
dered 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 fam-
ily 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 con-
cerned 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.”
For all their differences, Gill and Grant are the same
philosophically—they make it a priority to treat people
with respect and kindness. That’s not always easy. Gill has
a famous temper; Grant, a stubborn streak. “They have an
agreement that any time things get heated, they’ll pause and
take a moment to cool down, because words cannot be taken
OPENING SPREAD: PRODUCER: APRIL DACE; PROP STYLIST: NATE GRIFFIN; WARDROBE STYLIST: BOBETTE COHN; HAIR AND MAKEUP: PAIGE SIMMONS. SPECIAL THANKS TO
TOOTSIE’S ORCHID LOUNGE IN NASHVILLE. TYPOGRAPHY BY JON VALK. *“TRUE LOVE” LYRICS WRITTEN BY VINCE GILL & AMY GRANT. © 2011 VINNY MAE MUSIC (BMI) / GRANT GIRLS
MUSIC (ASCAP). USED WITH PERMISSION. OPPOSITE: CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT: JIM MCGUIRE/AP PHOTO; COURTESY OF GILL/GRANT FAMILY; PAUL MORIGI/GETTY IMAGES
