Gerry Turner admitted to being influenced by the producers while filming The Golden Bachelor. The Indiana native hinted that the show was somewhat fake during a Tuesday, December 26, appearance on LIVE With Kelly and Mark.

The show played a clip of Gerry’s proposal to Theresa Nist, which featured him saying, “You’re not the right person for me to live with,” before taking a big pause. He eventually finished the sentence, adding, “You’re the person I can’t live without.” Host Kelly Ripa, who has always been a skeptic of Bachelor Nation love stories, asked Gerry, 72, “Do the producers force you to do that? They make you drag it on like that and keep us all in suspense.”

The former restaurateur confirmed that the producers were in his ear before he got down on one knee. “They suggested it would be really great TV,” he shared. “They didn’t realize it would be horrible to Theresa.”

Gerry’s fiancée, 70, was admittedly upset by the wording of the proposal. “It was so mean!” she confirmed.

Still, Theresa accepted the proposal and the two are set to tie the knot in a televised wedding on January 4, 2024. The pair’s appearance on LIVE came after they celebrated Christmas separately, leading fans to fear that there may already be trouble in paradise. However, Theresa confirmed on Instagram that they were simply spending the holidays with their respective families, as Gerry currently lives in Indiana and she resides in New Jersey.

The lovebirds previously revealed that they plan to relocate to South Carolina to start their life together. “For the last couple of years, when my family gets together, I’ve talked about moving to South Carolina,” Gerry shared. “It’s an idea I’ve toyed with. And then in the conversation with Theresa, a private moment, she’s saying, ‘Well, yeah, my son lives near Charleston in South Carolina.’ And all of a sudden it’s like, there’s a big problem that’s gone. The issue of compromising on where to live and how to reconcile families and all of that is no longer an issue.”

Gerry and Theresa each share two children with their late spouses. The families have now blended, spending a significant amount of time together since the proposal.

“It feels really natural,” Theresa’s daughter, Jen Woolston, told Life & Style in an exclusive interview on December 18. “It feels really good. I mean, they were all over my house last weekend, and it was great.”