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“Golden Bachelor” star Gerry Turner believed he’d found “the one” in Theresa Nist — but just three months after saying “I do,” the fairy-tale romance came crashing down.
The 74-year-old Indiana widower made history as the first senior star of ABC’s hit dating series “The Golden Bachelor,” where he met Nist, also a widow. After a whirlwind courtship, they married live on TV in January 2024, only to announce their split that April. Now, Turner is reflecting on his search for a happily ever after in his new memoir, “Golden Years.”
“Well, I do admit that it was a monumental mistake, but it’s always easy to have 20/20 hindsight,” Turner told Fox News Digital. “I think that I hurt Theresa, I hurt my family. There were a lot of things that I was so imperfect about. … There was no one flash-bang moment where I realized the marriage was over. It was a gradual march toward the end.”
WATCH: ‘GOLDEN BACHELOR’ GERRY TURNER OPENS UP ABOUT SPLIT FROM THERESA NIST
In his memoir, Turner admits it was hard to accept how quickly things fell apart. He wrote that he’d “rushed into a wedding [he] didn’t believe in” and later found himself “in a very dark place.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Nist, 71, for comment. Ahead of the book’s publication, she told Us Weekly: “It makes me very sad to think that he felt empty and trapped. I wish he had said something and just ended it. But at least now I understand why he was so hurtful to me so many times. And I will say this. Those in glass houses should not throw stones. I do wish him all the best.”
Turner, a retired restaurateur, had found love before. He married his high school sweetheart, Toni, in 1974. Their union lasted until Toni died in 2017, six weeks after she retired and fell ill, People magazine reported. Their two daughters later encouraged Turner to join the show. The Midwesterner was hesitant but wondered if he could find love again.
“I was not interested,” Turner recalled to Fox News Digital. “I rebelled at the idea originally. But after a night of sleep, I thought, ‘I’ve got nothing going on here. Hopefully, this’ll work out for me.’ I threw my hat in the ring, and, of course, that began a really long process of getting to the point where I was actually named the first ‘Golden Bachelor.’”
It was easy to fall for Nist among the contestants. They both experienced heartbreak after long, happy marriages. Turner and Nist were also devoted to their children and grandchildren. It seemed like a match made in heaven — at first.
Turner claimed Nist told him that once she found “the right guy,” she would quit her job to focus on a new chapter of adventure with her spouse. But months later, he claimed that Nist wanted to work “another year, maybe a year and a half.” Turner said he respected Nist’s goals but wished he had known sooner.
“I’d try to shorten that time span because I really looked at what I wanted out of that relationship and what she wanted in her job as mutually exclusive,” he explained. “We couldn’t have both of those things. … It really told me that there was no way I was going to be able to enjoy what I wanted to do, which was travel, have some adventures and have fun.”
Disagreements piled up — over where to live, how to spend their money and even the prenup. Turner claimed Nist “didn’t want anything to do with Indiana,” while he viewed her New Jersey roots as a vacation spot, not a home. Days before their wedding, he said his lawyer called frantically about her missing signature on the prenup. People magazine reported that the couple did put a prenup in place ahead of their nuptials.
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Despite their efforts to find common ground, once cameras stopped rolling, the cracks deepened.
According to reports, Nist and Turner never lived together. During their brief marriage, they struggled to find a place they could both call home. In the book, Turner wrote that after sharing “a horribly awkward goodbye at the airport,” he realized they had “the warmth of a meeting between distant cousins.” It was not the second act he had envisioned for himself.
“That experience was very painful,” he told Fox News Digital. “There are expectations as you enter a relationship and then enter a marriage. There were things that I really wanted. I wanted those moments of intimacy, regardless of what they were. I wanted to build shared experiences. I wanted to begin to develop this catalog of memories that we would have. And those things didn’t happen. They just weren’t there.”
“It felt empty at times,” he continued. “It felt like we were forcing a relationship and forcing feelings that weren’t coming naturally as they should. I don’t believe it was one huge thing that caused us not to find commonality and not find happiness with each other, but rather dozens of small things that accumulated.”
Turner said he struggled with the truth — that he and Nist just weren’t compatible.
“What made us go forward with the wedding? I think Theresa and I are of the same mind here,” he reflected to Fox News Digital.
“We had a lifetime of commitment to a marital partner. … We knew the importance of commitment. We knew the importance of setting an example for our kids and our grandkids. … We said, ‘We can get to know each other. We can iron out any areas where we don’t know each other well enough. We can make this work.’”
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The marriage ended quietly during a private walk in California. They were in town for a function.
“We were trying one last time to see if we could reconcile our differences,” Turner said. “Finally, I just asked, ‘Do you think it’s time to call it quits?’ Her answer, without hesitation, was, ‘Yes, I think it’s time to call it off.’”
Turner later revealed he briefly had suicidal thoughts as he faced online criticism over the divorce.
“One night, while I was lying in bed and staring up at the ceiling, it all became too much, and for the briefest of moments, I thought about putting a gun to my head,” he wrote. “Just as quickly, though, I thought of Jenny and Angie. I could never do that to my daughters, but I don’t believe I truly wanted to kill myself. My suicidal thoughts were more an expression of my desire to disappear.”
“That was just a brief thought,” Turner clarified to Fox News Digital.
Months later, in December 2024, Turner revealed he had been diagnosed with a slow-growing bone marrow cancer. In the book, he claimed that Nist didn’t check in like some of the other contestants.
“I didn’t have any great expectations for Theresa or any of the other women when I shared what was going on with me, but to be that insignificant to someone I had married, albeit briefly, was very painful,” he wrote. “We no longer talk; we have no reason to.”
Today, Turner is feeling hopeful about his future — and love. In October, he announced his engagement to his new girlfriend, Lana Sutton. He popped the question 15 months after his divorce was finalized.
“I think there is a certain amount of resiliency that I have,” he said, looking back at the “dark period” in his life following the divorce.
“I refer to it as my marathon mentality, that you can endure anything for a certain period of time. And then, once that enduring of pain or unhappiness is over, it’s time to pick yourself up, put your big boy pants on and move on with life. And that’s what it was. I just had to shift gears.”