Amy Grant Says Her Health Scares "Made Everything More Precious" (Exclusive)

Amy Grant is feeling great — and thankful — after dealing with two serious health scares in the past four years.

The Grammy-winning singer, 63, who underwent open-heart surgery in 2020 and then suffered a brain injury in a bicycle crash in 2022, says the incidents “changed the way I look at life”.

Grant, who is working with the American Heart Association on a new heart health campaign, says that before she discovered she had problems with her heart, “I always saw myself living well into my nineties. My great-grandmother lived to be 94. She was sharp mind,” she says. “To realize that something you’ll never see could happen, and it could be over… made everything more precious.”

Amy Grant says she feels ‘fantastic’ 8 months after open-heart surgery to correct a rare condition

The “Baby Baby” singer only found out about her heart problems when the doctor caring for her husband, singer Vince Gill, 67, who had shortness of breath, suggested she get tested as well. She joked, “after she told Vince the ‘great’ news, ‘You’re just fat and out of shape’ — and Vince said, ‘Tell me something I don’t know!’ — the doctor looked at me and said: ‘I want to see you.'”

Vince Gill and honoree Amy Grant at the December 2022 Kennedy Center Honors.

Paul Morigi/Getty

Testing revealed he had a rare heart defect known as PAPVR (partial anomalous pulmonary venous return) in which some of the blood vessels in the lungs attach to the wrong place in the heart. The condition means the heart has to work harder and can cause breathing problems, lung infections, swelling of the heart chambers or other serious heart problems. In the new PSA, Grant describes it as “a ticking time bomb in my chest.”

Up until that point, Grant had known her heart rate would be high if she exercised and thought she just needed to build up her stamina. “I just learned to push through because that’s what women do,” she says. “I was one of those women who says, ‘I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m the Energizer Bunny,’ and then I’d just die. And I’m not ready to die.”

Amy Grant with incision after heart surgery in 2020.

Amy Grant/Instagram

Cardiovascular disease is the number one killer of women, according to the AHA, causing one in three deaths among women each year.

After open-heart surgery in June 2020, Grant says she renewed her commitment to staying in shape, taking up regular swimming workouts. “I was probably in the best shape I’ve been in a long time, maybe 20 years,” Grant says.

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And then, in July 2022, while riding her bike in Nashville, she hit a pothole. Despite wearing a helmet, she suffered a brain injury that left her with long-term memory problems for months.

“I would just say, ‘What if I never go all the way back?’ Because my processing was so slow, I could be in a room with people, but I didn’t come back,” she says.

Amy Grant says she had to relearn how to sing and still has ‘short-term memory problems’ after bike accident

But over time, Grant’s memory has improved, and she says, “now I feel like I’m in complete control of all my abilities.” She adds: “I write everything on a calendar. But whatever memory problems I have, I think they’re age-appropriate. I’m about to turn 64. So I just go, ‘I’m right on time.'”

Because her health scares her, her perspective has changed, she says. “I’m finding a different balance between music and family and just trying to be a lot more involved, as my grown children will allow,” she says. Grant has three children from her first marriage to musician Gary Chapman, as well as a daughter, Corrina Grant Gill, 23, whom she shares with Gill. Gill also has a daughter, Jennifer Gill, from his first marriage.

Amy Grant and Vince Gill perform at the Ryman Auditorium on December 13, 2023 in Nashville, Tennessee.

Jason Kempin/Getty

“It made us all look at each other with a kind of appreciation,” says Grant, who kicks off her annual Christmas concert series with Gill in Nashville later this month, the 14th year since the pair’s holiday residency. “I think being together was maybe a little bit on autopilot, and now it doesn’t feel like that.”

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Source: HIS Education