Amy Grant is speaking plainly about what happened when she met Vince Gill in 1993, while both musicians were still married to other people. On the September 1 episode of Human School, Grant said Gill’s kindness drew her in so powerfully that she fell in love with him.
Grant, 65, described Gill as the kindest person she had ever met and said she “couldn’t un-know his kindness.” She also said the respect she felt from him “tilted my world on its axis,” making clear that the emotional connection began years before they became a public couple.
Gill’s marriage to Janis Oliver ended in 1997. Grant and Gary Chapman separated in 1998, and their divorce was finalized in June 1999. Grant confirmed later that year that she and Gill were dating, and the couple married on March 10, 2000.
Grant did not describe those years as a simple progression from attraction to marriage. She spoke instead about lives changing slowly around them, then returned to the quality she says has remained central throughout their marriage: respect.
Grant Says Gill’s Kindness ‘Tilted My World’
Grant said she and Gill worked together while each was married and that his treatment of her felt impossible to forget. “I fell in love with him,” she said, while describing the respect she experienced around him as something she could not simply erase once she had felt it.
She has acknowledged that early connection before. In a 2003 ABC Primetime interview, Grant said she felt as though she knew Gill almost immediately and recalled that part of her loved him from early in their friendship.
Their musical connection developed quickly. Grant and Gill worked together during the 1993 Christmas season, including a television project, before Gill recorded the title duet for Grant’s 1994 album House of Love. They continued performing and maintaining a friendship during the years that followed.
They Did Not Publicly Become a Couple Until 1999
The distinction between having feelings and beginning a relationship is important to their history. Gill and Oliver divorced in 1997 after 17 years of marriage. Grant and Chapman, who married in 1982 and had three children together, separated the following year before their divorce became final in June 1999.
Grant and Gill publicly acknowledged their relationship later in 1999 and married outside Nashville the following March. They later welcomed daughter Corrina together, while Grant brought three children from her marriage to Chapman and Gill had a daughter from his marriage to Oliver.
Grant has resisted turning that history into a cleaner story than it was. In a previous PEOPLE interview, she said their repeated crossings were not something they had orchestrated and spoke about the grace, forgiveness and repair required across their first and second families.
Grant Calls Marriage a ‘Giant Rock Tumbler’
The newest interview moves from how Grant fell for Gill to what marriage has required since. She compared marriage to a “giant rock tumbler,” describing two people moving alongside each other while having experiences that do not always belong equally to both of them.
Grant said her physical setbacks have been hers to navigate, just as Gill has had opportunities and experiences that belong to him. The respect she noticed when they first met, she said, became part of learning how to live beside another person without expecting their lives to be identical.
She experienced that difference sharply after her 2022 bicycle accident and traumatic brain injury. During an April appearance on NPR’s Wild Card, Grant recalled asking Gill what would happen if the abilities she had regained were all she ever got back. Gill told her that everyone receives a different hand in life and that she could only live with the one she had that day.
They Marked 26 Years of Marriage in March
Прикажи ову објаву у апликацији Instagram
Grant and Gill celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary on March 10 with a joint Instagram carousel from their life together. The photographs included Grant sitting on Gill’s lap and another image of the couple kissing onstage.
The anniversary came more than three decades after the Christmas work that first put them closely in each other’s orbit. Grant has said blending their families took time, and she and Gill have both spoken publicly about the complications surrounding the beginning of their relationship rather than pretending those complications never existed.
In the Human School conversation, Grant again traced the marriage back to the quality she noticed before either of them was free to pursue a relationship. After 26 years of marriage, the kindness that first disrupted her life is still the part she chooses to name.