Gerry Turner is opening up about his divorce from Theresa Nist — and a life-changing diagnosis.
From his Indiana home, the Golden Bachelor alum, 72, calls PEOPLE over Zoom. Dressed in a suit and tie, Turner is ready to share new details for the first time about his shocking breakup from Nist, 71.
On the inaugural season of the ABC dating show, Turner and Nist ended their journeyby getting engaged during the finale episode, which aired in November 2023.A few months later, the two made their love official whenthey tied the knotduring a live televised wedding special in January 2024.
But after justthree months of marriage, the newlyweds announcedtheir decision to divorceduring a joint interview onGood Morning America, which aired on April 12, 2024 — the same day Turnerofficially filed.
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Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist's Relationship Timeline, from Golden Bachelor to Divorce
Turner, who lives three states away from Nist's New Jersey, said at the time that the distance had proved to be a problem and the two couldn't settle on a place to live together. They were both dedicated to their families and unwilling to leave them behind.
"There's a topic that I haven't wanted to talk about until now," he tells PEOPLE now, sharing how getting involved with various charities and fundraisers has inspired him to open up. "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 reveals.
Three years ago, Turner got a shoulder injury when someone knocked him over while he was teaching a pickleball class. At the time, he didn't have time to go to an orthopedic surgeon and when the show came along, his life got busier.
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"Finally I got around to going [to the doctor] and the orthopedic surgeon said, 'Yeah Gerry, there's not much we can do for your shoulder, but there are some unusual blood markers here,'" he recalls. "And so an orthopedic surgeon went to my family doctor, my family doctor referred me to an oncologist, and now I'm working with a hematology-oncology group in Fort Wayne."
Turner was diagnosed with a slow-growing "bone marrow cancer" with a "really long name" called Waldenström's macroglobulinemia, he says. According to the Mayo Clinic, the disease changes white blood cells into cancer cells and builds up in the bone marrow, the spongy material inside the bones where blood cells are made.
"Unfortunately, there's no cure for it. So that weighs heavily in every decision I make," he says of the diagnosis. "It was like 10 tons of concrete were just dropped on me. And I was a bit in denial for a while, I didn't want to admit to it."
Discovering his cancer was more of a "process, rather than an event," he says. The first wave of information he received from his oncologists was that he had a "blood disorder" — though he acknowledges he "pretty much" knew it would be cancer.
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After sharing his blood disorder with Nist in February, Turner went in for additional testing, including a bone marrow biopsy, some weeks later and his diagnosis became more definitive. In mid-March, he decided to "tell her what I knew and I explained the situation to her."
"Certainly, it was hard for me," he says of revealing his diagnosis to his then-wife. "But the conversation was brief and I think [she was] a little bit awestruck by the news. So understandable."
"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," he explains. "And the importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority."
The retired restaurateur noted that the "judgments" made about his separation were "unfair" to the now exes.
"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 continues. "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," he adds of fans.
Despite his diagnosis, Turner says he has no plans to say "no to anything" and has adopted Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying" as his new philosophy.
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"I'm going to pack as much fun as I possibly can into my life and enjoy every moment. And when I'm gone, I'm gone, but I'm not going to have regrets," he says earnestly.
Now, Turner wishes Nist "all of the good luck in the world, that she finds everything she wants to."
"That glamour and starstruck, whirlwind time was really a cherished memory," he says of their short-lived relationship. "It was wonderful, and I certainly wish it would've had a different ending, that we would've found our way, that we would've found solutions to a problem. And most of all, that I would not have had a diagnosis that so strongly influenced my decisions and the direction I went."