There was more to the shocking “Golden Bachelor” divorce than met the eye. Gerry Turner, who charmed all ages as the ABC franchise’s elder star, has cancer and he says that’s what cut short his marriage to final rose recipient Theresa Nist.
The 72-year-old revealed to People on Tuesday that early in their marriage he was diagnosed with a rare bone marrow cancer, which influenced their decision to split. Nist, in a separate interview with the magazine, appeared to disagree. (More on that later.)
Upon announcing their divorce in April, Turner and Nist said that distance was mainly the culprit. The two couldn’t decide whether they should live in Turner’s Indiana or Nist’s New Jersey — because they didn’t want to be separated from their respective families.
The reality star said the cancer revelation “probably will clear up a lot of mystery” around what happened at the beginning of the year.
“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,” he told People.
The former couple, who got engaged during the “Golden Bachelor” finale that aired in November 2023, tied the knot during an ABC special that aired in January. But three months later, the two announced on “Good Morning America” that they were calling it quits. Turner filed his divorce petition the same day, ending the short-lived marriage to the financial services professional.
Turner said his diagnosis followed a three-year-old shoulder injury that he sustained while teaching a pickleball class. But he got busy and didn’t have it properly looked at until after his run on the reality show. Then his orthopedic surgeon referred him to another doctor after his lab work contained “unusual blood markers” that they initially believed could be caused by a blood disorder.
The reality star said he was then diagnosed with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a slow-growing bone marrow cancer. The Mayo Clinic says it’s a non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that occurs when white blood cells turn into cancer cells and build up in the spongy material of the marrow.
“Unfortunately, there’s no cure for it. So that weighs heavily in every decision I make,” Turner told People. “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.”
The widower shared the perceived blood disorder news with Nist in February and underwent additional testing for a more definitive diagnosis. He told Nist in mid-March that it was cancer,. Their conversation was brief and she was understandably “a little bit awestruck” by the news, he said.
“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 said, adding that “the importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority.”
He also pushed back against judgments about their split that he believes are “unfair” and characterized their abbreviated union as a “cherished memory” that he wished had a different ending.
“I hope that people understand in retrospect now that [the diagnosis] had a huge bearing on my decisions and I think probably Theresa’s as well,” he said. “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.”
However, Nist, 71, told People that her ex-husband’s diagnosis “wasn’t a factor in the ending of the relationship.” At least not for her.
“If that was something on his part, maybe, I don’t know. But no, that didn’t factor into ending the relationship,” she said. “Part of it was the distance, but that wasn’t the only part. That’s really all I will say.”
Meanwhile, Turner said that he’s working with a hematology-oncology group in Fort Wayne, Ind., and is going to “pack as much fun” he possibly can into his life.
“[W]hen I’m gone, I’m gone, but I’m not going to have regrets,” he told the magazine.
