The newest resident of Bachelor Nation is about four decades older than the typical “Bachelor” and “Bachelorette” star. 71-year-old Gerry Turner will headline the upcoming spinoff “The Golden Bachelor,” ABC announced on Monday.
Turner — whose first name is pronounced like Gary — is a retired restaurateur who lives in his dream house on a lake in Indiana, ABC says in a press release. He spends his time hosting barbecues, playing pickleball, rooting for Chicago sports teams, four-wheeling, and getting quality time with friends and family.
He’s been married before, too. Turner tied the knot Toni, his high school sweetheart, in 1974, and the couple welcomed two daughters, Angie and Jenny, and two granddaughters, Charlee and Payton.
But Toni passed away in 2017 following an illness. That twist of fate came just six weeks after her retirement day. “She got robbed,” Turner said on “Good Morning America” on Monday. “Every day that goes by, that’s the thought that I have.”
Turner added, though, that he’d have Toni’s blessing. “I have her picture on a dresser in my closet,” he said. “Every morning, I give her a nod [and say], ‘So what do you think about this?’ For a while, it was like, I was having a hard time figuring out if she would be OK. But we always told each other, when one of us goes, we want the other to be happy. She’s up there rooting [for me]. She’s saying, ‘Yeah, Gerry. Do this.'”
So now Turner and his family are ready for him to find another love. His daughters even urged him to try out for “The Golden Bachelor” — which is scheduled to premiere on ABC this fall — and they started screaming when host Jesse Palmer called him to say he got the part.
“I’d love it if I found a partner who was high-energy, someone that maybe plays pickleball, someone that maybe plays golf,” Turner said.
The newest “Bachelor” star also said he “wouldn’t discount” the prospect of a wedding — or a wedding TV special.
