Wooten Hill Share How Romance Cost Them Their Christian Music Careers: ‘We Honestly Have Zero Regret’ (Exclusive)

Tricia DespresFri, October 23, 2026 at 2:00 PM UTC

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Wooten HillCredit: Russ Harrington -

Kim Hill and Paulette Wooten left Christian music 16 years ago after falling in love

The duo return with the 12-track album How Did We Get Here and single “Rise”

Hill and Wooten tell PEOPLE about their journey back to music

Sixteen years ago, Grammy-nominated and Dove Award-winning singer/songwriter Kim Hill and celebrated songwriter, musician, and award-winning film composer Paulette Wooten fell in love. Shortly after, they fell out of Christian music.

“We disqualified ourselves from Christian music,” Hill, 62, tells PEOPLE. “When we got together, we knew we had to leave Christian music. It cost us relationships with long, lifelong friends. It cost us our careers in that genre. It cost us all kinds of stuff with our families. And so, it was like moving to another world.”

Luckily, it is this new world that the pair — who perform together as Wooten Hill — have happily found themselves basking in ever since, and they’re now ready to let fans in.

“We’ve spent a lot of time doing a lot of work internally and changing our life and rebuilding our life,” says Hill. “And we finally feel like we’re ready to say something.”

Indeed, they more than say something over the course of their new 12-track album, How Did We Get Here, a hearty mix of gospel roots music and heartfelt lyrics telling the story of their shared Southern life experience and the obstacles they’ve overcome along the way.

“We used to be, you know, in the bubble,” says Hill.

That bubble was the Southern Christian world where both women had built their lives and careers. Hill herself had already scored a dozen No. 1 singles on Christian radio, and Wooten had her own successful career as a songwriter, musician and film composer. But once the two fell in love, there were personal and professional consequences for both women.

“I left Nashville thinking I’m done with music,” says Hill. “I’ve had my dream come true. I had a great career. And personally, I became the black sheep as opposed to the hero in my family. It opened our eyes to all the other injustice that we’ve been blind to in our privileged, kind of white, Christian world.”

The two went and built a new life together, opening their own creative retreat center and even selling Wooten’s famous pecan bacon rub. They were perfectly happy, until their hearts began to crave the feeling of making music once again.

“We have to do what we are created to do, what we’re meant to do,” says Hill. “And what we’ve done our whole lives that we love. And, and so it’s time to do it.”

“Our silence has felt like now we’re communicating the wrong thing,” Wooten, 53, explains. “We tried to build a different life outside of music. But ultimately, we just felt this call and this urge and this feeling that it is time for us to speak up and show up and, and represent, you know?”

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And yes, they speak up and show up and represent on their powerful new single “Rise.” The song “really came out of just reflecting on the world we grew up in,” says Hill. “We both grew up in the South and in the church and realized we inherited a lot of beliefs. We were blind to so many things until we were older, until our eyes were open in such a big way when we became the other.”

“It became this anthem of like, ‘Hey, we don’t know it all, but we do know what’s true,’” adds Wooten. “And that’s what we’ve had to come to terms with. It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a Christian faith or whatever — we inherit all kind of things that may not necessarily be true. And so, for us, falling in love and recognizing who we really were resulted in having more things to look at. And that’s how the song started.”

And in many ways, “Rise” is the anthem of Wooten Hill.

“We were told we were broken,” says Hill. “We were told we were all kinds of negative things if we chose to be together. So, this song allows us to take that back and own it and say, ‘No, we’re not broken.’”

Wooten HillCredit: Russ Harrington

The song’s powerful lyric video, premiering exclusively on PEOPLE, takes the duo into the grand pews of a gorgeous church located in the heart of downtown St. Augustine, Florida.

“We still can sing, and we can still even sing in church,” laughs Hill.

“We have this really deep-rooted peace, and we’re grounded in who we are,” adds Wooten. “There’s no shame. There’s nothing to hide. And so, coming from that place now feels really good.”

And perhaps more importantly, the love that changed their lives 16 years ago still feels just as right today.

“I never dreamed I could experience this,” says Hill. “We both say all the time, ‘How did we get here?’ We can’t even believe this. We could never have become the people we are.”

“It’s been a hard road in a lot of ways, but also, to be together and to feel peace and to feel love, even in the grieving and the loss of all the things that we’ve had to traverse,” adds Wooten. “It’s worth it. We honestly have zero regret.”

on People

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”