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Seminary professors probably don't study Stormie Omartian, but perhaps they should. Judging by book sales, Omartian influences more prayers than anybody else in America (save perhaps Prayer of Jabez author Bruce Wilkinson). Most of her readers are women. Most of her books follow a formula.

Start with the titles: The Power of a Praying (choose one) Wife, Husband, Parent, Woman, or Nation.

The contents are similarly patterned. The Power of a Praying Wife, for example, considers every aspect of her husband's life: his wife, his work, his finances, his sexuality, his temptations. In each short chapter, Omartian explains why that area of a man's life matters, and how it can be transformed by God's help. She uses lots of experience from her own marriage. Then she offers a sample prayer, often two or three pages long. Finally there are "Power Tools"—Scripture verses to use in praying.

Omartian doesn't teach how to pray so much as what to pray. She gives you the subject matter, plus the words and Scripture passages. This is not advanced prayer, mystical prayer, or miracle-a-day prayer. Her writing is not fancy. The closest counterpart is the book in your hardware store that tells how to install a sink. Omartian's books are tools for people who want home improvement. For illustrations, she uses snapshots from her own remodeling.

Omartian began in Hollywood. While still in college, she started work as a singer, dancer, and actor in the heyday of musical variety TV shows. She played a ditzy blonde on Glen Campbell's show, along with many other roles. Now in her 60s, she appears in publicity photos as a flawlessly made-up blonde with blue eyes. "My wife," husband Michael writes, "is a 'babe.' "

Michael himself is a Grammy-winning music producer who has worked with half the pop acts you've heard of. The Omartians worked together on several critically acclaimed CCM albums, including White Horse (1974) and Mainstream (1983). The Omartians and their dogs Sammy and Wrigley live in a gorgeous house on a hill outside Nashville. In the basement offices and recording studio, one wall is lined with Michael's gold and platinum albums, another with Stormie's magazine covers.

Stormie recorded successful exercise videos in the 1990s. Her children are professional musicians. She speaks before huge audiences all over America. She has sold six million books. Otherwise her life is fairly ordinary. If you met her at Wal-Mart, Omartian would not strike you as anything special—just an attractive middle-aged woman who talks in a rush of words and wants grandchildren in the worst way possible. "A sweet woman," her pastor, Rice Broocks, calls her. "Some people who talk about prayer, you wonder if they ever go to the grocery store."

Omartian grew up with an abusive mother. The family was poor, and Omartian often went to bed hungry. When she was a little girl on a remote Wyoming ranch, her mother would lock her in a closet and leave her for hours. She also beat her and cursed her. Her father, a quiet and gentle soul, was too passive to defend her. They had no neighbors. The little girl would make up poems and stories to entertain herself.

Ultimately Omartian's mother would be diagnosed as schizophrenic, though she was never hospitalized. Her daughter, an only child until she was 12, believed her mother hated her.

The family moved to Southern California, where her father ran a gas station and later worked at Knott's Berry Farm. Omartian felt ashamed of her home. She believed herself ugly and unlikable. In junior high school, she tried to commit suicide. In high school she compensated for her shaky confidence by joining student government and participating in school plays. She always got good grades. While studying music at UCLA she began to work in Hollywood. Soon she was singing, dancing, and acting on one TV show after another. Yet she grew even more unhappy. "No matter what glamorous and wonderful things happened to me," she says, "I still saw myself as ugly and unacceptable."

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July 2004, Vol. 48, No. 7