ABC
Gerry Turner Is Engaged to Theresa Nist! ‘Golden Bachelor’ Star Proposes and Wedding Date Announced
The Golden Bachelor star Gerry Turner is happily engaged to Theresa Nist after finding love on the reality show. If that wasn’t happy news enough, the two are tying the knot on January 4, 2024, in a live event!
Gerry, 72, got down on one knee to ask Theresa, 60, for her hand in marriage during the Thursday, November 30, finale. The engagement came after a brutal episode, where fans watched Gerry and Leslie Fhima conclude their relationship in a heartbreaking exit.
While the retired restauranteur is now happily engaged, he previously admitted that ultimately choosing who to give his final rose to wasn’t an easy decision. During the November 16 episode, he took both Leslie and Theresa to the fantasy suites. After having an amazing night with both women, Gerry said that the positive experiences made his final decision even more difficult.
“Right now, I’m dying inside. I’m in love with both of them, and in each case I’ve told them, ‘I love you,’” Gerry stated. “With each of them I can see a life together. Life with Leslie would be a very exciting life. She’s adventurous. She looks out for me and I look out for her. But Theresa and I have this bond. We know what the other person is feeling. We know what they’ve been through.”
Despite having strong feelings for both Leslie, 64, and Theresa, Gerry concluded the penultimate episode by stating he knew who he would propose to. However, he acknowledged that the woman he didn’t choose would be “hurt” at the end of the process.
Prior to the season 1 finale, host Jesse Palmer told Entertainment Tonight that Gerry’s final goodbye to the runner-up was the “most heartbreaking” and “most difficult” for him from the entire season.
While Jesse, 45, noted that the episode was “heart-wrenching” for Gerry to film, he promised viewers that the leading man ends the season on a positive note.
“Gerry showed up wanting to find someone he could spend his golden years with and I think he found that,” Jesse shared. “I’m really excited for us to make that announcement, see the happy couple. It will be an emotional rollercoaster, there is no doubt.”
Even before Gerry narrowed down the contestants to the final two, the TV personality admitted he had strong feelings for several of the women vying for his heart. Gerry initially believed he wouldn’t develop feelings for more than one person, though said he was wrong while speaking to Us Weekly in September.
“I thought, ‘No, that’s absolutely not possible. That’s silly.’ How wrong I was,” the father of two said at the time. “Because through the course of the journey, I really felt strong feelings for several of the women.”
However, the Indiana native assured viewers that he wasn’t fully “in love” with most of the women. “In retrospect, I realized that in that particular moment, whenever it was — the setting was such that, ‘Yeah, it was easy to look at someone and tell ’em that you loved ’em,” the reality star continued. “But once you get through it all and you look back, then you realize that there is just really one person that really meets the standard in all situations that you want it to be.”
