Disney/John Fleenor
The Golden Bachelor’s Gerry Turner Addresses Ex’s Bombshell Claims: ‘Happy to Look Forward’
Gerry Turner was hit with several bombshell claims from an ex-girlfriend on November 29, and he addressed those accusations in two interviews following The Golden Bachelor finale, where he got engaged to Theresa Nist.
“My only response is that I have so many positive things in my life right now,” Gerry, 72, told The Los Angeles Times on December 1. “I have the wonderful love of Theresa, my partner. I don’t have time to reflect on comments like this. I’m happy to look forward.”
When asked about the accuracy of the claims made by his ex, Gerry told The New York Times, “I guess I haven’t really looked at it as [to] how accurate it is. I’ve more looked at it in terms of timing and how it really doesn’t fit with all the positive things that are going on in my life right now. I mean, I’m sitting across from Theresa right now, and I look at her and she’s the love of my life. And I really don’t have time to think about some of the other stuff.”
A woman, who went by the name Carolyn in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter to maintain anonymity, alleged that she and Gerry were in a relationship for almost two years closely following the death of his wife, Toni. She said that she and Gerry met while he worked as a maintenance man at the Vera French Medical Center in Davenport, Iowa, and just one month after Toni’s death, she claimed Gerry asked her out on a date.
A year after Carolyn and Gerry began dating, she moved into the “dream home” the retired restaurateur originally purchased before Toni’s death in July 2017. Carolyn, who is over a decade younger than Gerry, went on to say that he even promised her elderly mother that he intended to marry her.
However, approximately 10 months after Carolyn moved into the home, the relationship began to go south. She claimed that Gerry disinvited her to his high school reunion, shortly before they ended things for good, when he indicated she’d put on weight and was no longer attractive.
“I’m not taking you anywhere looking like that,” Carolyn recalled Gerry saying as he pointed to her body. She admitted that she had gained weight from stress, but she “certainly wasn’t fat.”
Carolyn’s story was quite different to the one that viewers heard from Gerry during season 1 of The Golden Bachelor. On the show, he claimed that he had not dated since his wife’s death in 2017. However, he also told People on November 29 that he did try online dating after losing Toni.
“I’ve dated a number of times since Toni’s passed, more recently than back closer to when she’s passed,” he shared. “For one reason or another, the attempts didn’t work out. I could give you a wide range of reasons, but it doesn’t really matter.”
A source exclusively told Life & Style on November 29 that the contestants on The Golden Bachelor felt that Carolyn’s shocking claims “put a dark cloud over the whole show.”
“The perfect guy fantasy has been shattered and a lot of the women who fell in love with him feel lied to,” the source revealed.
Theresa seems to be standing by her fiancé amid the scandal. The two will tie the knot on January 4 in a televised wedding on ABC.
