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Baby Baby Goodbye
After 16 years, singer Amy Grant and songwriter husband Gary Chapman separate
No longer. On Dec. 30 the couple announced their separation after a 16-year marriage that produced three children: Matthew, 11, Millie, 9, and Sarah, 6. "This is easily the saddest thing I've encountered in my life," the somber Chapman told PEOPLE. "I'm an old-fashioned guy who believes marriage should last until one of you quits breathing." At first the match seemed heavenly indeed. Grant had already recorded Chapman's song "Father's Eyes" when they met at a party in 1979. They wed in 1982, just as Grant's breakthrough Christian album Age to Age was scaling the charts. In years to come, Chapman often opened for his wife on tour.
But in the last few years fans heard rumors of strains in the marriage. "We knew they were having a hard time," says a friend, producer Keith Thomas, "but we hoped they'd work it out." Even Grant, a five-time Grammy winner, has said that her husband often found himself in her shadow. In 1996, Chapman became host of the Nashville Network's Prime Time Country show, but that couldn't save the union. "I'm kind of a late bloomer," he says. "My career is, in many ways, just starting." For now the Christian music community, which shunned singer Michael English when he admitted to an extramarital affair in 1994 (his records were taken off store shelves), is withholding judgment. "Most people say they're praying for the couple," says Lindy Warren, editor of The CCM Update, an industry magazine. "But in this market, personal trials don't boost sales."
Baby Baby Goodbye
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"This is probably killing him," pal Keith Thomas says of Chapman (with Grant in 1996).