Vince Gill Once Missed His Opry Debut to Play Guitar for His Daughter’s School Talent Show

Stars like Luke Combs, Carrie Underwood and Chris Stapleton all turned out to honor Vince Gill during a CMT Giants special dedicated to the Country Music Hall of Famer, but one of the most meaningful performances of the night came from his daughter, Jenny.

When she took the stage, Jenny prefaced her performance with a story about her dad that speaks to the priority he always put on his family, even at the expense of his country music career.

"When I was in first grade, I really wanted to play in my school talent show, so I asked my dad, who I knew could play guitar really well, if he would play for me so I could sing. And of course, he said yes," she said, as an emotional Gill watched on from his spot in the audience.

But as the show approached, Gill got an invite to play somewhere else that night: The Grand Ole Opry. Not only was he getting a chance to perform on the Opry stage, he'd never played there before, so it would have been his Grand Ole Opry debut.

"And he asks them, 'This Saturday night?!'" Jenny recounts. "And you know what he told them? He said, 'I'm sorry, I can't make it.'

"So instead of making his Grand Ole Opry debut that night, he showed up at my elementary school to play for his 6-year-old daughter, and we played 'You Are My Sunshine,'" she continues.

In an Instagram Reel of the moment shared by CMT, Gill added an additional memory of that story when it was his turn to step on stage: This part of the story takes place years later, when Jenny had grown up and was preparing to get married, and she and Gill had to settle on a song for their father-daughter dance.

"And she calls me and says, 'I've got the perfect song,' and I said, 'I do too.' We both said, 'You Are My Sunshine,'" he added.

CMT Giants: Vince Gill taped at the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Belmont University in Nashville on Sept. 12. The show aired on CMT on Friday night (Sept. 16). Brad Paisley, Cody Johnson, Sting, Chris Stapleton and more are among the other artists who turned up to honor Gill.