Happy Birthday, Trisha Yearwood!

Happy birthday to Grammy award-winning country music artist, author and television host, Trisha Yearwood! She turns 53 years old today.

Although Yearwood is predominantly known for her rich, strong vocals on songs like “She’s In Love With the Boy” and “How Do I Live” after her country music debut decades ago, she has been making a name for herself in the culinary field. Standing shoulder to shoulder with her music awards are three best-selling cookbooks and a cooking show on the Food Network.

Whether she’s performing or cooking Yearwood believes she has always been her happiest when she follows her life’s passions.

“It’s funny. If you asked me when I was five years old, I was so focused on being a singer that I would never have said ‘I want to grow up and have a cooking show, and cookbooks, and furniture, and cookware, and home accessories,” Yearwood says on her website. “It really just happened when I began doing the things I love. Most of the things in my life that have been successful have been because I had a passion and let it guide me.”

After graduating college in 1987, Yearwood was given the opportunity to turn an internship at a record label into a full-time position. While there, she recorded a few demos and worked as a back-up singer, where she lent vocals to Garth Brooks. After Brooks introduced her to his producer, Yearwood soon found herself signing with MCA Records.

In 1991, Yearwood not only released her first album that went double platinum, but she also became the first female country artist to sell at least one million copies of a debut record.

Since 2005, the singer has been married to Brooks. When the two met while making music together in the late 1980’s, both were married — Yearwood to musician Chris Latham and Brooks to Sandy Mahl, the mother of his three children.

In 1999, Yearwood and called it quits with her second husband and only a year later, Brooks and Mahl divorced.

Though rumors always flew that Brooks and Yearwood had chemistry, neither one of them acted on it until each was divorced. However, in an interview this summer with Parade Magazine, both said they instantly felt something for one another after meeting and later believed it was always meant to be.