Gerry Turner is opening up about his divorce and his cancer diagnosis.
The “Golden Bachelor” star reflected on his divorce with Theresa Nist, who he married on the hit ABC dating show in January. But just three months after tying the knot, Turner and Nist announced their divorce, a decision Turner says was influenced by factors he’s never spoke about, until now.
“There’s a topic that I haven’t wanted to talk about until now,” he told People. “I think it’s time, also because it probably will clear up a lot of mystery around what happened back in February, March and April.”
“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 revealed.
In mid-March, the retired restaurateur shared the news with his then wife. “Certainly, it was hard for me,” he explains. “But the conversation was brief and I think she was a little bit awestruck by the news. So understandable.”
Turner continued: “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. And the importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority.”
The 72-year-old also says the public made “judgments” about the couple’s separation that were “unfair.” “When you are hit with that kind of news and the shock wears off after a few days or a few weeks and you regroup and you realize what’s important to you, that’s where you start to move forward,” he explained. “And I hope that people understand in retrospect now that that had a huge bearing on my decisions and I think probably Theresa’s as well.”
“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.”
In terms of his thoughts on Nist, Turner says he wishes her, “all of the good luck in the world, that she finds everything she wants to.”
In an interview with People, Nist says she has faith that Turner’s diagnosis is, “going to be the type of cancer that will not affect his life and that he’ll live to be a very healthy old age.”