Grammys Flashback '97: Hillary Clinton...?

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Don't be mistaken; what you're seeing truly happened. Hillary Clinton, then First Lady of the United States of America, won a Grammy in 1997. Just keep reading.

In 1996, Hillary Clinton published her first book as First Lady entitled It Takes a Village, which conveys her vision for American children and details what it would take to realize such a vision. The First Lady also narrated an audio recording of the book, for which she received a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Recording.

After receiving the award, Mrs. Clinton made her visit to the pressroom short and to-the-point, taking on her signature political tone.


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"This is my first ever Grammys, and as I said when I thanked everybody, I didn't even know that people who couldn't sing a note and were tone-deaf were eligible for any Grammys," the current U.S. Secretary of State says in the flashback. "It's a great, amazing honor for me."

The Best Spoken Word Recording Award, which was most recently won by Betty White at the 2012 Grammys, may not be considered a prestigious award but has been received by some exalted social figures, including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (1971), Orson Welles ('76,'78,'81), Magic Johnson ('92) and Maya Angelou ('93, '95, '02).


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"He's a young man; you don't know what might happen," she responds when asked if her husband, President Bill Clinton, could win a Grammy. "If he really got to work on his saxophone and worked on his voice, I'm not sure you should count him out...There's a future there, I hope."

Her wishes for her husband to win a Grammy were realized, but not in the way that she had originally hoped, as he would go on to win the same award as she did eight years later for his autobiography, My Life.


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The year after Bill Clinton won the award for his autobiography, then-senator Barack Obama won the award for the audio recording of his memoir, Dreams from My Father, and won the award once again as a senator in 2008 for The Audacity of Hope.

Nevertheless, Hillary Clinton stands as the only member of the presidential family to have won a Grammy while living in the White House.