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

Mar. 15, 2025

Amy Grant.Photo:American Heart Association

American Heart Association

Amy Grantis feeling great — and grateful — after facing two serious health scares in the past four years.

The Grammy-winning singer, 63, who underwentopen heart surgeryin 2020 and then sustained abrain injuryin a bike crash in 2022, says the incidents “changed the way I look at life.”

Grant, who is working with theAmerican Heart Associationon anew campaignfor heart health, says that before she discovered she had issues with her own heart, “I always saw myself living well into my nineties. My great-grandmother lived to be 94. She was sharp in the mind,” she says. “To realize something can happen that you never see coming, and it could be over…everything became more precious.”

Vince Gill and Honoree Amy Grant at the Kennedy Center Honors in December 2022.Paul Morigi/Getty

Paul Morigi/Getty

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

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

Amy Grant with her incision after heart surgery in 2020.Amy Grant/Instagram

Amy Grant/Instagram

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

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And then, in July of 2022, while riding her bike in Nashville she hit a pothole. Despite wearing a helmet, she sustained a brain injury that left her with lingering memory issues for months.

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

But over time, Grant’s memory has improved, and she says, “now I feel fully in control of all my capacity.” She adds, “I write everything on a calendar. But whatever memory issues I have, I think are age appropriate. I’m about to be 64. So I’m just going, ‘I’m right on time.'”

Since her health scares, her perspective has shifted, she says. “I’m finding a different balance between music and family and just trying to be a lot more involved, as my adult children will allow it,” she says. Grant hasthree childrenfrom her first marriage to musician Gary Chapman, along with 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

Jason Kempin/Getty

“This has made us all look at each other with a kind of appreciation,” says Grant, who begins her annual series of Christmas concerts with Gill in Nashville at the end of this month, the fourteenth year the couple has undertaken the holiday residency. “I think being together maybe was a little bit on autopilot, and it doesn’t feel that way now.”

source: people.com