Golden Bachelor fans, we’re here to share some happy news. A few months after revealing that he’d been diagnosed with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a bone marrow cancer, season one star Gerry Turner has provided fans with an update on his condition — and his love life.
On April 15, the retired restaurateur appeared on the Bachelor Happy Hour podcast with Joe Amabile and Serena Pitt, where he told the Bachelor Nation alums that, despite the diagnosis, “life is actually pretty good.” He told the podcast host he plays pickleball three times a week for three hours and has been enjoying the spring weather.
“It’s kind of my barometer for health and well-being,” he said of the sport. “There’s a level of tiredness [that] if I hit beyond that, I start to wonder if something’s wrong. If I’m short of that, I wonder if I’m not working hard enough.”
Let’s dig deeper into what else Turner shared about how he’s faring lately.
Gerry Turner’s cancer update
In December, Turner told PEOPLE that he’d been diagnosed with bone marrow cancer, and that unfortunately, “there’s no cure for it.” He said that the cancer was found after he’d hurt his shoulder during a game of pickleball. His orthopedic surgeon noticed “some unusual blood markers,” and he was eventually referred to an oncologist and received a bone marrow biopsy.
The good news is that Turner told Amabile and Pitt that he feels great. “Until I have any symptoms, there’s no treatment, so I go frequently for blood tests,” the 73-year-old explained. “I’m on, like, a six-month schedule now, and I feel optimistic because the doctor has said, ‘Well, when you turn 75, we’re going to have to go three-month increments.’ So it’s telling me that at least he expects me to live another couple of years to get to that. But the bottom line is I feel really good.”
He also said that receiving this health news has given him a new perspective. “It’s a privilege to live like you’re dying,” he said. “I don’t turn down anything. I feel like I’m more open to emotions. I’m more open to experiences.”
Who is Gerry Turner dating?
It was at this point in the conversation where the former Golden Bachelor made another revelation — he’s dating again. “The person I’m dating will say, ‘Do you want to go do—’ And before she even gets out the rest of the sentence, I will say yes. So I’m in on everything,” he continued.
He added, “It makes life exciting because you kind of, in the back of your head, feel like you’ve got a lot of living to do and you don’t know how long you have to do it, so don’t turn down anything. And so, in a way, it’s really a good thing.”
He didn’t reveal who the lucky lady is, and for good reason: “At this point, it’s going well, but I don’t want to say too much and jinx it. And I’m trying to respectfully get to a point where there’s an acceptable amount of time from my divorce. Maybe that’s an old-fashioned thought — maybe it doesn’t matter as much as I think it does, but to be respectful, I kind of want to slow roll this.”
But we do know some information. Gerry said his partner has daughters, “and she relates well to my daughters,” who’ve met her.
He also said he told his ex-wife of three months, Golden Bachelor winner Theresa Nist, about his new relationship, “so it won’t be a shock to her.” And speaking of Theresa, he opened up about the dissolution of their marriage, offering some clarity.
“I think from my side of it, my perspective, I withdrew from her. I felt like maybe I was a source of bad feelings and the negativity that came out of the show and so forth. So I kind of avoided talking to her, and not out of ill will or being combative at all. Just, I thought it was better if we gave each other space,” he said.
Turner added that both of their devotion to their families played a role in the relationship not working out. “Her being a brand-new grandmother and me having gone through the loss of a spouse and feeling the support of my daughters, it almost created a situation where we recognized fairly quickly that we weren’t going to find that spot where we could be together. And I think more than anything, that was it.”
That seems to track with what Nist had previously said, when she implied that the two couldn’t settle on a location to put down roots. (Nist is still in New Jersey, and Turner remained in Indiana after the show.)
But Turner emphasized that there’s no bad blood between the ex-spouses. “I really feel like there was a mutual admiration and respect and empathy in both ways that we kind of understood the other person’s situation.”
