Vince Gill and Amy Grant Set the Record Straight on 11-Year Marriage

Power couple Vince Gill and Amy Grant have been married 11 years now, and they sat down recently with AARP to discuss their relationship, a connection which had a difficult start.

It was the end of 1993 when the two first met (and consequently worked together). Gill was married to Janis Oliver then, while Grant was married to TV host and Christian singer Gary Chapman, with whom she had three children. Grant reveals that her marriage "had been rocky from the get-go. I'd been holding steady for 15 years in something that was not easy to hold steady."

Around Christmastime that year, the two had a few concerts together. Grant says, "I knew from the tips of my toes that he was unlike anybody I had ever met. 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.'" Grant's interest in Gill caught her off guard, and she didn't know what she was going to do about it.

As time went on, Gill wrote songs that seem to have been inspired by Grant, like 'Whenever You Come Around' and 'When Loves Finds You.' Right from the start, the rumor mills were swirling with talk of infidelity between them -- but Gill says that is just not true. Friends could see the chemistry they had and Gill says, "We were crazy about each other," but he realistically knew that was "not our life. The hard truth was that we never thought for a minute that we would wind up together."

Grant was reading the newspaper in April of 1997 when she found out Gill was getting divorced. Two years later, Grant and Chapman were divorced, and when it became final, she and Gill started dating. He says, "It was hard. The kids, the popularity of our lives, a lot of tongues waggin'."

They were married in March of 2000 and their biggest challenge turned out to be blending their families. Grant's children were 12, 10, and 7, and they did not accept this new marriage very well. Gill says what became their healing balm was the birth of their daughter Corrina the next year. He reflects, "[She's] the glue of this whole family. She bonded all of us in a blood way that really did connect us."

Mutual friend Rodney Crowell sums their relationship up this way: "Sometimes one person in your life puts that final block in place, and you step into the ownership of who you are. 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."

Gill is currently on tour, and on his next date, he and Grant will share the stage at New York's Carnegie Hall on April 20. They will be the special guests of James Taylor, along with Robert Cray, Jerry Douglas and Alison Krauss.