Amy Grant Shares the Simple Yet Profound Advice From Husband Vince Gill After Her Traumatic Brain Injury

Celebrating their 26th wedding anniversary this year, Vince Gill and Amy Grant are indisputably country music’s most wholesome couple. Just months after performing together for the first time in December 1993, the pair collaborated on “House of Love”, the title track from Grant’s 1994 album. Both married to other people at the time, the two began dating in 1999 after Grant filed for divorce from her first husband. (Gill had separated from his first wife two years earlier.) Together, the power couple have navigated tremendous highs and devastating lows over the past quarter-century. Recently, Grant shared how the “One More Last Chance” singer lifted her up in the aftermath of a 2022 bicycle accident that left her with a traumatic brain injury.

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Amy Grant Has Leaned on Vince Gill Throughout Numerous Health Issues

Since 2020, Amy Grant has battled a laundry list of health conditions, including throat surgery and shoulder surgery. The contemporary Christian singer-songwriter, 65, underwent open-heart surgery in February 2021 to correct a rare condition her doctor discovered during a routine checkup.

A little more than a year later, Grant found herself back in the hospital in July 2022 when she hit a pothole while riding her bike in Nashville. The accident caused a traumatic brain injury and memory loss—perhaps the worst fate possible for someone whose greatest career asset is her mind.

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During an appearance this week on NPR’s Wild Card with Rachel Martin, Grant recalled, “I spent several months of quiet—you know, no screens, I was not on the phone… I lived in my backyard with my shoes off in the grass, just writing and just just trying to recall things.”

Navigating her new normal, the six-time Grammy winner asked her husband, “What if this is all I get back? What if this is it?”

“Because, to me, it’s like the world is in a conversation, and I am down the hall and in a back bedroom. This is like my response time,” said the “Breath of Heaven” singer. “I love making people laugh. I love delivering a great one-liner. But that doesn’t happen when you’re three steps behind the room.”

Gill, 69, replied, “Amy, life happens to every one of us every day. A virtuoso musician could have a stroke and never be able to pick up their instrument again. All you do is, you just take the hand you’re dealt that day and live the life that you get.”

[RELATED: The Greatest Compliment Vince Gill’s Mother Gave His Wife, Amy Grant, and How It Translates to Their Music]

She Has New Music on the Way

With the hand she was dealt, Amy Grant turned that time of pain and uncertainty into her forthcoming 20th studio album, The Me That Remains.

Out May 8, it is her first full-length album of completely original material since 2013’s How Mercy Looks From Here. Grant has released the title track and “The 6th of January (Yasgur’s Farm)” as the record’s first two singles.

Featured image by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for CMA