No matter how many GRAMMY awards you might have under your belt, impressing your in-laws can be a nerve-wracking experience, which is why the compliment that Vince Gill’s mother gave his wife, Amy Grant, meant so much to the couple. Gill once called it the highest praise he had ever heard his mother give a woman he brought home to her, and it’s easy to see how the compliment translates to the musical careers of both Gill and Grant.
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As much as the two musicians forged a connection in a personal sense, both Gill and Grant have similar artistic upbringings, starting when they were kids.
The Greatest Compliment Vince Gill’s Mother Ever Gave Amy Grant
Vince Gill and Amy Grant went from creative collaborators to bona fide musical power couple when they wed in early March 2000. For as squeaky clean as either of their professional reputations is, their relationship was rather salacious. Both were married to other people in the 1990s. But as Gill and Grant grew closer through musical duets and public outings, rumors began to spread about the two being closer than they appeared to be. They denied any infidelity. Years after splitting with their respective partners, Gill proposed to Grant.
In a 2013 interview with Katie Couric, Grant jokingly referred to her “grim-faced children” in her wedding photographs. “Vince and I were the only excited ones,” Grant said. The Christian pop singer added, “It just takes time. And it’s okay to let it. It’s okay.” While Grant and Gill’s children might have been hesitant to accept a new person into their family, at the very least, Gill’s mother could spot what made her son’s second wife so extraordinary to him.
“She has an old soul,” Gill said of Grant in a 2007 interview with Jimmy Carter (not that one). “I think what people identify in Amy is a timelessness, you know. My mom paid her the greatest compliment I think I’ve ever heard my mom pay anybody. She told Amy, ‘You’d have made a good farm girl.’ My mom grew up on a farm, knew hard times, knew hard work, knew all those kinds of things. She really admires Amy, and that’s what I see in Amy. She could have lived in any stretch of time.”
How This Praise Translates to Their Music
Both Vince Gill and Amy Grant started their musical careers at a young age. They spent their childhood and teen years cutting their teeth in various projects and bands. In fact, they were even doing it around the same time. Gill is only three years older than Grant, which means the two musicians were establishing their styles, tastes, and talents from their respective homes in Oklahoma and Tennessee. Having spent so much time playing music with their family and in the church, they both developed a keen sense of respect for tradition and their elders.
Perhaps most importantly, both musicians learned to consider themselves as conduits for their talent, not an embodiment of talent itself. “I think that we both possess similar qualities in the way we approach life,” Gill told Jimmy Carter in 2007. “I think we both have a realization that the gifts we’ve been given are special. But they never allow us to make us be the ones that are special. It’s just the gift. I think therein lies the difference in some people. They wind up with a great gift, and then they think it makes them special.”
Gill and Grant’s mentality around how they live their life and approach music is a testament that hard work is what counts, not talent or luck alone. And that’s true whether you’re in the recording studio or on the farm, like Gill’s mother.
Photo by Evan Agostini/Getty Images
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