Biography of Vince Gill - Songwriter and Guitarist

Success is not measured by the number of years you have stayed at your job but how relevant you are to the people around you. Vince Gill boasts an illustrious career that has spanned for decades, yet he is not just an ordinary singer but also a role model to many budding singers trying to find their feet in the music industry.

Well-loved for his heart-melting country hits, the musician also makes extra cash as a songwriter and is famed for being good on the guitar. Gill's professional career began sometime in 1970 when he started playing with the country rock band Pure Prairie League as its frontman. He later went solo in 1983, performing in so many cities as a duet partner and guest vocalist.

In addition to a slew of highly-coveted awards, Vince has written, produced, and recorded over 20 studio albums. He equally stands out as the only male country music artist to have won about 21 Grammy Awards. The musician has also charted more 40 Hot Country songs on the U.S. Billboard charts.

The iconic country music singer's full name is Vincent Grant Gill. He was born in Norman, Oklahoma, in the United States on April 12, 1957, to a father who was a lawyer and an administrative law judge.

Vince has an older half-brother called Bob Coen, who came from his mother's previous relationship. Bob died in 1993 following a 1968 fatal car crash that left him with non-reversible brain damage. He was 22 years old at the time of the crash.

The singer studied at Oklahoma City's Northwest Classen High School, where he was a member of the popular local band Mountain Smoke. Gill performed bluegrass with the band and later moved to Louisville, Kentucky, after his graduation from high school in 1975. While he was living in Louisville, he performed along with the band Bluegrass Alliance, after which he joined the Boone Creek band. His next stop was in Los Angeles, where he joined fiddler Byron Berline's bluegrass group called Sundance.

Gill owes his relevance in the music to his father, who was a part-time member of a country music band during his active years. He was the one who encouraged him to pursue a career in music and to also try his hands on guitar and banjo.

Today, the singer has about 18 CMA awards which came from the Country Music Association to his name. Gill has also been inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2007 as well as the Guitar Center Rock Walk on February 4, 2016. Sometime in 2017, he was hired alongside Deacon Frey by the Eagles to replace the late Glenn Frey.

Vince Gill has been married twice in his lifetime. His first attempt at marriage was to country music singer Janis Oliver whom he met in Los Angeles. The pair later got married in 1980 and welcomed their first daughter in 1982 called Jennifer Jerene Gill.

Oliver, who was a member of Sweethearts of the Rodeo band, was born on March 1, 1954, in South Bay Los Angeles. She divorced her husband in 1997, when the two were living in Nashville.

Four years after Vince divorced his first wife, he got connected to Amy Grant, who is a Christian singer and a victim of stormy marriage. Following their meeting in 1993, they went on to form a lasting friendship and later got married in March 2000, one year after Grant finalized her divorce from her husband Gary Chapman. Their marriage produced one daughter called Corrina Grant Gill.

Named Amy Lee Grant at birth, Vince's second wife was born on November 25, 1960. She also banks as a writer and media personality and is popular for his classic pop hits, which began making waves in the 1980s and 1990s.

Dubbed "The Queen of Christian Pop", Grant has won twenty-two Gospel Music Association Dove Awards and six Grammy Awards. She was the first Christian singer whose album was certified Platinum in the music industry.

For selling more than 30 million albums worldwide and making other notable impacts in the music industry, Amy Grant was honored with a star on Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006. She is the writer of the memoir, Mosaic: Pieces of My Life So Far.