Copyright Parade
Key Points Gerry Turner details his rapid rise to fame, whirlwind marriage, and public divorce. His memoir shares personal lessons from love, loss, and being on reality TV. Despite setbacks, Turner is now engaged again and feels happier than ever. Gerry Turner would like to set the record straight. When ABC announced in 2023 that its popular reality dating show, The Bachelor, would get a spinoff called The Golden Bachelor for seniors looking to find love again, Turner, a 72-year-old widow based in Indiana, had no idea that the show would resonate with fans the way it did. And he definitely couldn’t have predicted that, within a two-year span, his newfound fame would lead to him getting engaged, married, divorced and ultimately engaged again. His Golden season ended with an engagement to Theresa Nist, a 72-year-old financial services professional from New Jersey. The couple tied the knot in a televised wedding on January 4, 2024, but it didn’t last long — just three months later, they announced their divorce. Following Turner’s public comments about feeling “trapped” in the lead-up to their wedding, Nist said in a statement that she wished he had spoken up and ended the relationship earlier, but now understands “why he was so hurtful to me so many times.” “I had spent enough time keeping quiet and keeping my head down, not responding to innuendo and half-truths and veiled implications of things,” Turner tells Parade. “I was kind of tired of it. I go, ‘You know what? I’m going to tell the whole story. I’m going to fill in all the blanks that have been left out there.’ … I’m not at all trying to be in a payback mode or vengeful about anything. I’m only trying to level the playing field and present what I feel is the entire picture about some of these issues.” 🎬 SIGN UP for Parade’s Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 That entire picture is laid out in Turner’s new memoir, Golden Years: What I’ve Learned from Love, Loss, and Reality TV, which arrived on shelves Tuesday, November 4. The book chronicles Turner’s first marriage with his wife of 43 years, Toni, who died in 2017, his experiences filming The Golden Bachelor and both the wedding and divorce from Nist. “My biggest regret is how much I tried to apply logic and rational thinking to an emotional situation,” Turner says. “I didn’t listen to my heart nearly enough and listened to my head way too much.” In the book, Turner recalls a moment that took place just one day prior to their wedding, when he began to wonder if he shouldn’t go through with it. Ultimately, he felt like it was his responsibility to follow through on what he had started. “In hindsight, you go, ‘Yeah, it didn’t work out, so I obviously shouldn’t have done that,'” Turner says. “But in the moment, you think it’s cold feet. … There were an awful lot of factors that were just peaking at that moment. And I thought, ‘Don’t let those things affect what you believe is the right path for you.'” A few months after announcing the divorce, Turner revealed in December that he had been diagnosed with early-stage Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, an incurable bone marrow cancer. He claims he “kind of got the quiet treatment” from Nist after he told her the news; Nist told the Almost Famous podcast over the summer that his diagnosis had “zero” weight when it came to deciding to end the relationship and she “would have never left my husband over an illness.” (Nist and her first husband were married for 42 years before he died in 2014.) “I’m really blessed. I feel pretty good,” Turner says of his current health status. “I don’t have symptoms. And the symptoms are the first indicator to the doctors that I need treatment. So every six months, I go for a blood test and there’s one particular marker that indicates the progress of the cancer. And as long as I don’t have any of those symptoms that have been listed for me, it’s pretty much life as normal.” Turner shares that he’s been tuning into Season 2 of The Golden Bachelor, which aired Part 1 of its season finale on Wednesday, Nov. 5, followed by the conclusion next week. He says he didn’t get the opportunity to offer this season’s star, former NFL linebacker Mel Owens, any advice prior to filming, but doesn’t think he would have, if given a choice. Related: Who Is Mel Owens, the New ‘Golden Bachelor’? “I think each guy, assuming there’s going to be more of us, needs to find his own way and plot his own philosophy on how he’s going to move forward,” Turner says. “I didn’t want to bias his perspective.” Turner did receive some advice about navigating newfound life in the spotlight from a previous Bachelor star, though. Prior to filming the “After The Final Rose” reunion for 2024 Bachelor Joey Graziadei, Turner met 2022 Bachelor Clayton Echard. Echard, who had also received some social media criticism following his season, shared some words of wisdom. “He goes, ‘I tell them, if you have a problem with me, give me a call. And if you don’t know me well enough to have my phone number, I don’t think you should have a problem with me,'” Turner says. “It really stuck with me. Now, I look at that in quite a different light.” Related: ‘Golden Bachelor’ Gerry Turner’s Memoir Bombshells Have Critics Talking Turner’s Golden Bachelor stint may have not directly led him to the marriage he had hoped for. But a few months after that public divorce, he met Lana Sutton, with whom he says he instantly fell in love. The two got engaged about a month ago. They haven’t had much time to plan their wedding yet, but Turner says he’s now mostly just enjoying having found love again. “It’s that feeling that I have with Lana that I keep trying to find on the show. I got it partially and I tried to force the rest of it,” says Turner. “Obviously, both for Theresa’s sake and mine, maybe it should have been differently. But I will say this: Because all of that happened, I’m at the happiest spot of my life. And had I not gone through all of those things, I probably wouldn’t be in this exact spot today and I wouldn’t be enjoying what I’m enjoying right now.”
