[3] After high school, she married the Bishop Ronald E. Brown of Faith Tabernacle Deliverance Temple in Orangeburg, South Carolina.

The LP included a cover of Dottie Rambo's, "We Shall Behold Him", as well as "First Trumpet Sound," a gospelized remake of Gladys Knight & the Pips' "Midnight Train To Georgia."

Dealing with a company that hadn't signed her, she found herself being subtly pushed to tone down the Christian message in her music.

[6] Her 1991 MCA release was The Lady which included production by R. Kelly, husband Marvin Winans, and her son Mario.

The nine-song album was missing the name Jesus and controversially contained a rendition of West Side Story's "Somewhere".

[2] This controversy led to the Gospel community not backing the album, and after also failing to break through on contemporary R&B radio, MCA eventually dropped Winans from their roster.

Her label debut Vickie Winans rose to #10 on the gospel charts, spawning the hits Work It Out and We Shall Behold Him.

However, she developed nodes on her vocal cords, causing her to fail to hit all the right notes in her re-recording of We Shall Behold Him.

[2] She ran across a James Cleveland classic tune from the 1960s called "Long As I Got King Jesus" and used it as the lead single and megahit for a traditionally-styled album in 1997 titled Live In Detroit.

In 2002, she signed with Verity Records at the invitation of her longtime friend Max Siegel who had assumed leadership of the label.

[7] After a four-year hiatus, in 2003, Winans released Bringing It All Together which featured "Shake Yourself Loose", written and produced by her son, Mario.

Leaving nothing to chance, she dipped deep into her own pockets to create a marketing strategy that most gospel labels would never spend on a project.

Taking a line from an old hymn classic favorite, Winans creates a brand new song that celebrates her victories, faith and trust in God.

[10] It opens with an upbeat, but old school church flavor and breaks down into a contemporary vamp before she slams a closing with her nephew, Tim Bowman Jr. who lays down some jazzy scats.

The new label's name is personal to Vickie:"Right after I had my son, Coconut (Marvin Winans Jr.), I got pregnant with a little girl.

[8] Her profile on BET's Sunday morning TV series "Lift Every Voice" remains the most watched episode in that program's history with over 800,000 viewers.

[8] Black Entertainment Television (BET) signed Winans to host a new comedy TV series, "A Time to Laugh."