Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner details grim ‘honeymoon’ with Theresa Nist

On Jan. 4, 2024, more than 5 million viewers tuned in to see Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist — who met and fell in love on ABC’s The Golden Bachelor — tie the knot in a live wedding special. It was the happily-ever-after the network was hoping for after casting Turner, then a 72-year-old widower from Indiana, as the first-ever star of their senior Bachelor spinoff.

Alas, like so many Bachelor romances before theirs, Turner’s marriage to Nist, a New Jersey-based financial planner who was 70 at the time, did not last. The couple announced their divorce in a joint interview on Good Morning America in April 2024, with Turner telling host Juju Chang that “we’ve kind of come to the conclusion mutually that it’s probably time for us to dissolve our marriage.”

Now, a year-and-a-half since the GMA interview, Turner has decided to reopen that chapter of his life with a new memoir, Golden Years: What I’ve Learned From Love, Loss, and Reality TV. As the title suggests, the book chronicles Turner’s journey from heartbroken widower to unlikely TV star to senior-citizen newlywed. Turner also devotes many pages to his ill-fated marriage to Nist and reveals his perspective on what went wrong with their relationship.

Entertainment Weekly has an exclusive excerpt from Golden Years, in which Turner shares an account of his awkward and uncomfortable first visit with Nist in her Shrewsbury, N.J., home after their televised wedding.

Nist, meanwhile, disputes Turner’s version of events, and you can read her full statement to EW after the excerpt from Chapter 8 of Golden Years below.

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Forty-eight hours after Theresa and I said, “I do,” we parted. In what had become standard operating procedure for us, we made a huge declaration of love and commitment and then went our separate ways. She flew home to New Jersey while I returned to Indiana.

I wouldn’t blame anyone who accused me of being a phony when I exchanged vows with Theresa on January 4, 2024. But I can say that despite my fear that we weren’t ready for marriage, I still committed to the sacred institution with all my heart. Whatever it took to make this relationship work and last, I was willing to do. It wasn’t just for her that I vowed to Theresa “to choose you every day as the one I love and never take your heart for granted.” As people in our seventies, we had drawn our children and grandchildren into this union, and we owed it to them to give it our very best effort.

That’s what I was doing when I drove fourteen hours to Shrewsbury on January 11. I was married to the lady; I thought I should at least see where she lived! I feared that if I was not proactive and did not make the trip a top priority, inertia would set in.

I must admit I was surprised by the size of Theresa’s one-story house. The tiny two-bedroom seemed to suit her perfectly. Inauspiciously, there wasn’t much room for me. I looked around for a place to put my suitcase and couldn’t find a convenient flat surface. Certainly not in the tiny master bedroom, where space was at a premium. I finally decided the best solution was to put my belongings in her office, which was just a few short steps from the bedroom. I instantly felt like a trespasser in her home, like I didn’t belong. The stark reality — this was life with my new wife — took my breath away. Because the space was so confining, I lived directly out of my suitcase for the duration of my stay.

Another surprise? Her stove-turned-vanity. Theresa used her flat stovetop as her makeup counter because (1) she didn’t cook much; (2) the lighting was better because the range was next to a window; and (3) there was more space to spread out than in the bathroom.

“If I want to cook eggs,” I asked, “where do I go for that?”

Theresa was kind enough to clear the stove while I was there and cooked a few meals for us, most of which were salmon — medium-rare — and green vegetables. Looking back at our engagement feast that night in Costa Rica, I realized that the whole dinner had been totally out of character for her. We had both eaten like somebody was going to take the food away from us. I don’t know if that was because we had been sequestered with limited choices of food or because we were feeling the release of the show’s end. I know I felt like I was just out of jail.

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But while perhaps a tad decadent, our meal in the Falcon’s Nest had not been an anomaly for me. I eat everything, which is probably not great either. But food is an important part of my life. There’s joy in experiencing new delicious dishes with your sweetheart, whether at home or at a restaurant. Theresa liked to dine out, but only if the place catered to her diet. We couldn’t share a pizza, Chinese food, or burgers and beers.

As I was beginning to realize during my stay in New Jersey, physical intimacy wasn’t going to bond Theresa and me either. My first night at her house, she took out sheets and pillows before telling me, “Tomorrow’s a big workday. I need a good night’s sleep. Do you mind sleeping on the sofa?”

“Yeah, no problem” were the words that came out of my mouth, but I was really thinking, “Why? We’re married!”

I did not want to make waves, especially on my first night in her home. Of course, if Theresa wanted to take things slowly or was having mixed feelings, I would understand. I would never force anyone to do anything they weren’t comfortable with. If her question had become the start of an authentic and honest conversation about deeper issues, I might have even welcomed it. Instead, Theresa and I remained silent while she made up the couch for me. The non-confrontational route turned out to be a mistake, because one night on the couch turned into two and then three.

Once again, this was a very different Theresa from the woman I’d encountered in Costa Rica. At the resort, her behavior regarding intimacy was comfortable, even forward. When we returned to the States, she ignored opportunities for intimacy. I brushed it aside, figuring it was the nerves of keeping our engagement a secret and then the exhaustion of the wedding planning. But what was the excuse now? When I arrived in Shrewsbury, it should have been an awesome trip. This was our first time together that we didn’t have to hide. We were married. It should have been a frickin’ honeymoon!

I had a really hard time making sense of it. I feel like I’m a pretty confident guy. Comfortable in my own skin, I don’t get shook giving a speech to a crowd or an interview on national TV. But the rejection I got from Theresa rattled me deeply — and stayed with me for a long time. A lot of thoughts went through my head. Am I not attractive anymore at my age? Have I somehow offended Theresa? Hurt her feelings? It made me think Toni was a saint for sticking with me for forty-three years.

I define intimacy in a number of different ways. It’s certainly not just sex. Sharing thoughts and feelings candidly without fear of judgment, that’s intimate. Making your partner feel special, that’s intimate. Being someone’s unmistakable number one priority, that is really intimate. Same with holding hands in public or cuddling at night. Even exchanging looks across the room so you know your partner is thinking the same thing you are. All those intimacies that I really hoped to have again with a woman seemed just out of reach in my relationship with Theresa.

With the signs that Theresa cared about me fading, everything started to bother me. Sleeping on the sofa had made me a little bitter. But there were other small events that highlighted our differences. One night, while driving to dinner, I went five miles over the speed limit in Shrewsbury, and you would have thought I had a gun to her head the way she reacted. And if you think I’m exaggerating, I am not. Admittedly, I do not drive like the typical seventy-something person. But if there is one thing I can say with 100 percent confidence about myself, it’s that I don’t take foolish risks. OK, I am the guy who got married on national TV to a woman he had only met a few months prior! So let me clarify: I don’t take risks with motor vehicles.

On another night, when we were, of course, dressing to go out for dinner, I was ready to leave when Theresa looked at me and pointed up and down like a kindergarten teacher. “Oh no, you’re not wearing that,” she said. “Let’s go over to the Lululemon and grab you something better.” I was wearing jeans and an expensive REI shirt, but it was a plaid, which maybe she thought looked unsophisticated. I really didn’t want to get bent out of shape over this, even though I wondered why I had driven fourteen hours to sleep alone and have my wardrobe criticized. So I tried to turn my frown upside down by taking selfies of us in the dressing room and later posting on Instagram about what a great time we’d had. Truthfully, however, I realized I could never embrace the East Coast lifestyle.

(Excerpted from Golden Years: What I’ve Learned from Love, Loss, and Reality TV by Gerry Turner. Copyright © 2025 Gerry Turner. Used with permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved.)

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When reached by Entertainment Weekly for comment on Turner’s account of his visit to her home in New Jersey, Nist provided us with this statement:

“I’m not sure if Gerry has a faulty memory or if he just wanted a more dramatic story for his book. Here’s what really happened: We slept together the first night in my very small bed. After my husband passed away, I moved out of the master bedroom into a smaller bedroom with a full-sized bed and I turned the master bedroom into an office.

That first night of Gerry’s visit, I didn’t sleep at all — because I had been sleeping alone for nine years, and sharing a bed again takes some getting used to. In the morning, Gerry asked me how I slept. I told him that I hadn’t slept at all, and he offered to sleep on the couch going forward. I was extremely grateful and said, ‘I promise you that when you come back, I will have a king-sized bed all set up in the master bedroom for us.’

After that visit Gerry went back to Indiana, but we put our money together and I quickly went to work ordering a king-sized bed and all the linens for us to use. My daughter and I put the entire bed together in a day and I sent Gerry photos of our progress. I was so happy that we now had a wonderful bed to sleep together in, but Gerry never returned. However, two of my great friends from the show, Susan Noles and Peggy Dercole, got to enjoy the bed when they came to visit me this past summer.

Regarding the Lululemon story, we were lying on my couch when I received a direct message from someone on Instagram saying how excited she was that Gerry was in town, and that she worked at Lululemon and she would love for us to come visit the store. Gerry agreed. When we got there, Gerry saw a shirt and asked me if I thought he should try it on. I enthusiastically said yes, and we went into the dressing room together. He asked me if I thought he should buy it and I said, ‘Yes, you look great in it!’ And he bought it.

He was grateful for my encouragement because he said in the past, he always hesitated to buy things that he knew he should have. As for the shirt he was wearing before dinner, that was an entirely separate occasion where I gently suggested he wear something different because the restaurant was upscale — something any good wife or partner would do. These were entirely two separate stories that Gerry decided to combine together for effect.”