2010 Greggys: Coming Out Story of the Year: Chely Wright touched our hearts with her raw honesty

Considering this was the year that Ricky Martin came out publicly, this was a surprisingly easy call.

No celebrity coming out story moved me more than that of Chely Wright who told her story so well in a new memoir Like Me: Confessions of a Country Singer.

Here’s what I wrote about Chely, the country singer best known for her hit Single White Female, earlier this year: With her honesty and hard-earned strong sense of self, Chely could end up becoming one of the most effective activists in the LGBT movement. She’s articulate, emotionally intelligent, and might be able to reach a lot of people out there who are not being reached. I think she is most magnificent and a gift to us all.

Chely did such powerful interviews on Oprah, The Today Show and with other media outlets that I was, at times, brought to tears.

Despite her professional success, Chely was haunted by her closely guarded secret. She told Oprah: “I was never able to fully absorb the joy of my accomplishment. With each rung of the ladder I climbed, people wanted to know more. Had you told me in 2000, had you said, ‘You’re going to be the first chart-topping country music singer to step forward and acknowledge her homosexuality,’ I would have laughed in your face. I knew it would ruin my career.”

When a decade-plus relationship with a woman ended in 2006, a heartbroken Chely began to have a breakdown and ended up putting a gun to her mouth: “I couldn’t find a way to get the pieces of my life to fit, and [I thought]: ‘I’m trapped. I can’t come out because there’s never been an openly gay country music singer,”’ she says. “I decided on that night I was done. I was tired. I couldn’t do it anymore. I said a prayer to God to forgive me for what I was about to do, and I began to cry.”

“There was not a cataclysmic event that had led me to that night,” she added. “It was layers of a lifetime of hiding and lying. … [I thought], ‘I’m a successful country music singer, and I’m a lesbian.’ Those two things had historically never co-existed, and I had painted myself into this corner.”

Chely to Oprah on taking her power back by coming out: “I’ve been whispered about in country music for a long time. … The word ‘lesbian’ has been used as an insult,” she says. “[Now], you can say I’m ugly. You can say my songs are stupid, but I won’t allow the word ‘lesbian’ to be used as an insult toward me anymore.”

She told Oprah she wants to make a difference in the lives of other people and God bless her for it: “Young people in every corner of America are being told by their churches, and their parents are echoing what the churches are telling them, that they are damaged goods. And they are not,” she says. “I have to stand up. I’m uniquely positioned in my culture of country music. … Country fans know me. They already think I’m a heck of a gal, a patriot, a good girl, and I am a lesbian. I have been the whole time.”

Other 2010 Greggy winners: Darren Criss is New Star of the Year! and Lily Tomlin: Icon of the Year!