America fell in love with Gerry Turner as he, in turn, fell in love with Theresa Nist on “The Golden Bachelor” in late 2023. That’s why fans were so shocked when the winning couple announced their divorce earlier this year after just three months of marriage.
Now, just over a year after the “Bachelor” spinoff’s first season finale aired, Turner has opened up about their breakup, revealing in the process that he was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer as they were still trying to make their relationship work.
“There’s a topic that I haven’t wanted to talk about until now. I think it’s time, also because it probably will clear up a lot of mystery around what happened back in February, March and April,” he told People in an interview out Wednesday. “As Theresa and I were trying very hard to find our lifestyle and where we were going to live and how we were going to make our life work, I was unfortunately diagnosed with cancer.”
Turner and Nist ended their “Golden Bachelor” journey engaged in late November 2023. They then tied the knot in early January on their “The Golden Wedding” TV special, but announced their divorce in mid-April on “Good Morning America” shortly after.
At the time, they explained the mutual decision was due to neither party wanting to be apart from their respective families. However, Turner newly shared that he was diagnosed with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia in March, which also heavily impacted the split.
“Unfortunately, there’s no cure for it. So that weighs heavily in every decision I make,” he said. “It was like 10 tons of concrete were just dropped on me and I was a bit in denial for a while, I didn’t want to admit to it.”
At first, Turner was told he had a “blood disorder” after taking some tests following a shoulder injury, which he shared with Nist in February. However, once it was confirmed to be cancer a month later, he realized he needed to focus more of his time and energy on his existing, pre-fame familial ties.
“I wanted my life to continue on as normal as possible, and that led me to believing that ‘as normal as possible’ more meant spending time with my family, my two daughters, my two son-in-laws, my granddaughters,” he recalled. “The importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority.”
“I hope that people understand in retrospect now that that had a huge bearing on my decisions and, I think, probably Theresa’s as well,” Turner added. “Hopefully they’ll look at things a little bit differently, that maybe it wasn’t quite a rash, fast decision that people thought. That there was something else going on.”
After “The Golden Bachelor,” another of Turner’s exes, Joan Vassos, went on to find love with Chock Chapple as the first-ever “Golden Bachelorette” — though that pair remains just engaged.
