Tiffany Thornton lets her hair go curly as she arrives at Variety‘s 2010 Power of Youth event at Paramount Studios in Hollywood on Sunday (October 24).

The 24-year-old up-and-coming singer stopped to chat with JJJ on the purple carpet about meeting one of her idols, Martina McBride. Check out how it happened:

“Oh my God! Being on Sonny, we [the cast] meet kids all the time and it’s so refreshing to be on the other side of that. She walked into a diner that I was at for a business meeting and I looked at the people around me and said, ‘I’m probably going to start crying and need to take a deep, deep breath. I really want to go say hi to her.’ They actually made me go say hi to her and she was so sweet. It was so great.”

How great for Tiffany! Samantha Droke is also pictured below.