- Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner revealed that he was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer this year.
- Turner and Theresa Nist announced their plan to divorce in April.
- Turner said his diagnosis affected his decisions, but Nist said it wasn’t a factor in their breakup.
Months after announcing their divorce, “The Golden Bachelor” exes Gerry Turner, 72, and Theresa Nist, 71, are talking about a health diagnosis that affected their relationship.
In a new interview with People magazine published on Wednesday, Turner revealed that he was diagnosed with an incurable form of bone marrow cancer around the time that he and Nist were figuring out the details of their future together.
Turner said that he chose to speak out about his cancer diagnosis now “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 said.
Turner told the publication that he injured his shoulder three years ago but didn’t get around to having it checked out. Once he finally visited an orthopedic surgeon, Turner learned that he had “unusual blood markers.” That led to meetings with more doctors, and eventually being diagnosed with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, an incurable, slow-growing cancer in which white blood cells turn into cancer cells and build up in the bone marrow.
Turner, a widower and father to two daughters, won over Bachelor Nation when he was tapped to star in the inaugural season of “The Golden Bachelor,” the first show in the long-running franchise to focus exclusively on older men and women looking for love.
Turner and Nist, his final pick, got engaged in Costa Rica during the finale, which aired in November 2023. They later married in early January during a live televised ceremony called “The Golden Wedding.”
But three months later, the couple appeared on “Good Morning America” and announced their plan to divorce after having “a number of heart-to-heart conversations.” The couple also said that they couldn’t agree on where to live together, as Turner is based in Indiana and Nist is in New Jersey.
Turner said that he told Nist about his diagnosis in mid-March and she was “a little bit awestruck by the news.”
The reality TV star said that he wanted to maintain a sense of normalcy in his life, “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.”
“The importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority,” he said.
Turner said that he hoped that people who were critical of his and Nist’s split could understand that his diagnosis “had a huge bearing on my decisions and I think probably Theresa’s as well.”
Nist spoke to People magazine in a separate interview and said that she was “extremely upset” about the diagnosis, but it “wasn’t a factor in the ending of the relationship, at least not for me.”
“If that was something on his part, maybe, I don’t know. But no, that didn’t factor into ending the relationship,” she said. “Part of it was the distance, but that wasn’t the only part. That’s really all I will say.”
