Just over one year after announcing they were ending their three-month marriage, OG Golden Bachelor winner Theresa Nist is looking back on her “whirlwind” relationship with lead Gerry Turner.
“It was another world,” Theresa, now 71, recently told Us Weekly during an exclusive interview, adding that the series was an “incredible” experience overall. She then acknowledged, “We were caught up in such excitement at that time. And then when it all ended, it was like, ‘OK, I’m back to my regular life and what is life like?’ I just had to step back and just reexamine who I was. It’s been a lot of introspection.”
The Bachelor franchise had one of its most successful ventures in years when Gerry, now 73, handed out roses as the first-ever senior star. Viewers watched Gerry propose to Theresa during the November 2023 finale. They wed in front of ABC cameras in January 2024.
“I don’t like to regret anything,” Theresa said to Us more than once during our Zoom chat. “But it’s not that they were saying to us, ‘OK, we’re offering you this wedding and you can do it six months, a year, two years, whenever you want to.’ It was now or never. The decision had to be made quickly. And we said, ‘OK, if we’re really going to go through with this and we’re gonna get married, if we do it this way, we can get the wedding of our dreams. It’ll be spectacular.’ It was a quick decision.”
Now, she can admit, “We probably should have waited.”
“That would’ve been the right thing to do,” she said. “It was just so exciting and this is it, here’s your deadline.”
Still, Theresa maintains that her feelings and desire to get married were real at the time as evident by her and Gerry’s kids’ involvement.
“They were so excited, so supportive and we all believed it was going to work,” she said. “We wouldn’t have done it [otherwise]. I was in love. I really believed this was forever and for the rest of my life. We all thought that. I mean, listen to our wedding vows and what my daughter said and what his daughter said. We truly, truly believed it.”
The initial assumption from fans was that the twosome split over distance as they never followed through with their plans to relocate to Charleston together. Instead, at the time, Theresa stayed in New Jersey and Gerry remained in Indiana.
“That was not the reason,” Theresa told Us as a matter of fact. “But I will give kudos to [Golden Bachelorette] Joan [Vassos], who started her season by saying, ‘I’m not moving and I don’t expect that person to move.’ I think they went into the inaugural season treating us just like the young people who are just starting their lives. They together can go and find their way and decide where to live. But when you’re talking about older people who have homes and they’ve got community and they’ve got children and, maybe, grandchildren, that’s a difference. She and [fiancé] Chock [Chapple] have found a way to make it really work. And maybe that could’ve worked [for us]. They have to be open-minded to that. Either that, or have it in the same city or the same state or neighboring states. But that was not the reason.”
Theresa then made it clear: “I wanna say this. His illness was not the reason whatsoever.”
Gerry went public with his Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia (a slow-growing type of bone cancer) diagnosis in December 2024. In an interview with People at the time, Gerry said he told Theresa in February 2024.
“When you are hit with that kind of news and the shock wears off after a few days or a few weeks and you regroup and you realize what’s important to you, that’s where you start to move forward,” he said of how his health affected his decision to get divorced. “And 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.”
Theresa doesn’t agree with her ex-husband’s remarks.
“That was never a discussion. I was quite surprised to read that. He said that [about his reasoning] and said he would imagine it was my reason too. It was not at all my reason,” she told Us. “I would’ve stuck with him through thick. My husband of 42 years, Billy, was sick for the last five years of his life and I stayed with him and took care of him. He said, ‘It weighed heavily into my decision,’ I think, and, ‘I would imagine into Theresa’s too.’ So he just imagined that [because] there was no discussion.”
According to Theresa, when she learned about Gerry’s illness, he hadn’t experienced any symptoms or undergone any treatment yet.
“And thank God,” she continued. “I’m so happy for him. I want him to live a long, healthy, prosperous, wonderful life. I’m rooting for him. I don’t want him to be sick.”
So what really happened between Gerry and Theresa? “I don’t know if I’ll ever say what the reason was for me,” she said.
“But I will say that it’s really hard to know somebody in that amount of time,” Theresa continued. “And then after the show was over, it was just a whirlwind of excitement and we were caught up in everything and there were interviews and we were going to events. It was also an abbreviated version of The Bachelor. We only had one-hour episodes. And so the amount of time that I was with him was what you saw on TV. There was no other casual interaction, like, there might be on Bachelor in Paradise where you can hang out.”
Despite the mention of BiP, which will feature both traditional Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants and members of the Golden franchise, Theresa told Us that she will not be on the spinoff show. She also played coy about her current relationship status, saying she would like to keep things private.
“I think that’s one thing I learned — the public scrutiny and especially to rush into something so quickly and then all of a sudden, what if it doesn’t work out?” she noted.
Gerry, for his part, announced earlier this month that he has a new girlfriend named Lana Sutton. After sharing the news with TMZ, he posted photos with Lana via Instagram, writing, “I can’t believe how many people in Charleston recognized us and wished us the best.”
Under the advice of Joan and Golden Bachelor runner-up Leslie Fhima, which he received while attending Grant Ellis’ finale in March, Gerry reached out to Theresa prior to the news going public.
“He brought that up to both of them to say, ‘What should I do?’ And Leslie said, ‘Of course, tell Theresa, she’ll be happy for you.’ And so the next day, he texted me and I said, ‘Can you talk?’” she said, noting that they got on the phone. “He said, ‘I just wanna let you know I met someone.’ I said, ‘That’s wonderful. I’m so happy for you.’ He goes, ‘I was afraid to tell you.’ ‘Why would you be afraid? I only want your happiness.’ Like, if this was the way it happened for him to find his person to go on the show, get married, and then find his person this way, then it was meant to be.”
Joan confirmed to Us in an interview earlier this month that she advised Gerry to tell Theresa about Lana.
“Her finding out on social media or something isn’t great,” she said, adding that she knows “there’s no love lost there.”
“They’re fine. They are both very happy with their lives and they did the right thing,” Joan said. “They did what was right for them and I respect that completely. They didn’t drag this on and try to make it work. They knew where their hearts were and they both stepped away and good for Gerry. He found somebody.”
Joan added that Gerry was “really cute” about his new relationship. “I felt that sense that he really needed somebody in his life that he wanted to love again. And he had a lot of love to give. I think he dove into this really quickly, but I think it’s a great relationship from what I can tell,” she said. “She’s phenomenal. They talked about really important things, his cancer. And she is all on board and she’s like, ‘Whatever years I have with you are perfect.’ They’ve talked really long-term.”
Theresa, for her part, concluded that she got a lot out of the experience, from learning how to post on social media — “I was petrified the first time I had to do a double post” — to testing her own resilience.
“There was a point in the show where I really almost did want to leave. I really did at the moment,” she said. “I wanted to melt into the floor. I wanted to disappear. I didn’t wanna be a part of it anymore, but I persevered.”
Plus, despite how unexpected it may seem to all of Us, she was there to make friends after all.
“I’m very much the best friend of Leslie. We practically talk every day. I feel like I’ve known her all my life,” she said of Gerry’s runner-up. “But I regularly talk with most of the women on the show and it was just so wonderful to find people who were in the same situation that I was.”
The Golden Bachelor franchise is expected to return to ABC with lead Mel Owens, an NFL linebacker-turned-lawyer, later this year.
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