International Gospel Singer, Cece Winans Celebrates 60th Birthday In Style
“I turn 60 today! And I’m celebrating the Goodness of God 🙌🏽 I’m grateful my life is filled with peace, love and laughter! Thank you Jesus! And thank you all for celebrating with me. Love you ❤️”
Priscilla Marie Winans Love, known professionally as CeCe Winans, was born October 8, 1964 in United States of America. She is an American gospel singer who has garnered 15 Grammy Awards, the most for any female gospel singer; 31 GMA Dove Awards, 19 Stellar Awards, 7 NAACP Image Awards, 1 Billboard Music Award along with many other awards and honors to her credit including being one of the inaugural inductees into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame in Atlanta, Georgia. Winans is the best-selling and most awarded female gospel singer of all time, and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Music City Walk of Fame.
Winans has 19 million record sales certified by RIAA. She first rose to prominence between the 1980s as a member of the double platinum selling Gospel duo BeBe & CeCe Winans with her brother, Bebe Winans; before launching her own highly acclaimed solo career. Billboard magazine lists all of her solo albums as top Gospel, Christian, and R&B music sellers, and six albums as a duo with her older brother Bebe.
Winans first went to Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1981 as a singer on the Christian telecast The PTL Club, hosted by Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. Although originally part of the larger Winans family singing group, CeCe and her older brother BeBe became a duo during their time at PTL, in response to positive reactions to their version of the song “Up Where We Belong” sung as a duet, with lyrics changed for Christian audiences. In 1984, CeCe and Bebe released their first album, Lord Lift Us Up, for PTL Records.
They achieved cross over success, eventually releasing nine Gold and Platinum recordings, billed as BeBe & CeCe Winans. Winans left PTL in 1984 just before getting married. Her brother left in 1985. They released their second album in 1987: BeBe & CeCe Winans. BeBe & CeCe Winans are the first gospel artists to have their album Different Lifestyles sell over a million units, only the second gospel album to do so after Amazing Grace by Aretha Franklin.
