Nancy Grace and David Linch. | Source: Getty Images
Political and legal commentator and former prosecutor Nancy Grace married a man she went on a blind date with more than two decades after the fact and shares two children with him.
TV host and actress Nancy Grace was 46 years old when she married Atlanta investment banker David Linch, and she readily confessed it was a spur-of-the-moment decision but hardly a whirlwind romance.
Grace and Linch first met on a blind date in the late 70s when they were students at Macon University. Linch fell in love, but Grace struggled to come to terms with the tragedy that was to haunt most of her adult life: the murder of her fiancé.
Nancy Grace and husband David Linch at a “Wendy Williams Show” taping in October 2012 in New York City. | Source: Getty Images
Nancy Grace was born in Macon, Georgia, on October 23, 1959. From a very young age, Grace had a passion for English literature and was determined to become an English professor, but when she was 19, a tragedy changed her chosen course.
Her fiancé Keith Griffin was murdered by a co-worker in 1979, and a devastated Grace decided to dedicate herself to the law and victims’ rights. Grace earned her law degree from the Walter F. George School of Law and became a prosecutor for the Georgia District Attorney’s office.
Grace wore her sister Ginny’s wedding veil, and wrote her own vows to marry the man who’d waited patiently for 28 years for her to be ready to love again.
Grace left the District Attorney’s office under accusations of prosecutorial misconduct and joined Court TV as a legal commentator. She hosted “Trial Heat,” a program offering live trial coverage from 1996 to 2004.
She hosted “Closing Arguments” in tandem with her show on CNN, “Nancy Grace,” from 2005 to 2007. She finally left Court TV in 2007 to focus on her CNN show, where she covered controversial cases like the Casey Anthony and the Amanda Knox cases.
Grace, who now hosts a podcast called “Crime Stories with Nancy Grace,” is a successful author with several crime thrillers under her belt and two non-fiction books, “Objection” and “Don’t Be a Victim.”
Nancy Grace played herself in several movies: the Will Smith sci-fi film “Hancock” in 2008, and in 2016 she was in “Midnight Special” and the DC Comics movie, “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.”
Nancy Grace Married 28 Years After a Blind Date
Grace had met Linch on a blind date while she was still coming to terms with the loss of her fiancé. Linch was smitten, but Grace revealed that at that time of her life, she was so grief-stricken she was incapable of even thinking about romance. She said:
“I grieved for Keith for so many decades. After Keith’s murder, I dropped out of school. I was lost. I almost missed the opportunity to have a family, to have children. I just couldn’t let go.”
But Linch didn’t give up on Grace. He kept in touch and stayed in her life as best he could, even though she was living in New York, and he lived and worked in Atlanta, Georgia.
The announcement of Grace’s marriage stunned her colleagues and fans. In June 2007, Grace broke the news that she had married Linch in April. Grace confessed:
“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision to get married. I told my family only two days before [the wedding].”
But the wedding announcement wasn’t the only bombshell. The 46-year-old Grace revealed that she was three months pregnant and was expecting the arrival of twin babies in January.
Nancy Grace Thought Having a Family Would Never Happen for Her
Grace revealed that marriage and motherhood were things she’d stopped factoring into her future long ago — and the trauma of her faincé’s death left her afraid to be vulnerable to loss again. She said.
“I always wanted to be a mother, but after Keith’s murder, I thought having a family would never happen for me — so seeking justice became my whole world. For a long time, after the trauma of his murder, I couldn’t risk losing it all again.”
Grace changed her mind about opening herself up to life again after grieving for nearly three decades when she dreamed about her deceased faincé. In the dream, Griffin told her to move on and make a new life for herself.
Grace called Linch the next day and asked him to move to New York. They decided to marry and start a family immediately. The TV personality declined to comment if she underwent fertility treatments to conceive her children.
Linch and Grace welcomed their children John David and Lucy Elizabeth, not in January 2008 as they had expected, but in November 2007. The twins were premature and tiny, with David weighing in at 5 pounds and Lucy 2 pounds.
Grace has revealed that the challenges of being a mother have increased as time goes by. She fully expected that the demands of twin teens would be easier to deal with than those of twin toddlers, but like so many moms, she’s discovered that the bigger they get, the tougher it gets.
Wedding With Just the Two Families There
From the beginning, Grace has kept her marriage to Linch away from public scrutiny, and it all started with a small intimate wedding in Atlanta with just their two families present.
The uncompromising commentator, known and feared for what admirers and detractors call her “pit-bull disposition,” revealed her romantic side. She married Linch in a tiny church in her native Macon and walked down the aisle to the sound of her favorite song, “Moonriver.”
Grace wore her sister Ginny’s wedding veil and wrote her vows to marry the man who’d waited patiently for 28 years for her to be ready to love again.
Grace has revealed that her marriage to Linch is happy and that he has a gift for making her laugh. That isn’t to say that they don’t sometimes argue; after all, Grace is a prosecutor at heart, but Linch’s humor carried the day.
