In the enchanting realm of reality television, Gerry Turner has captivated audiences as the charismatic lead of ABC’s latest iteration of The Bachelor franchise, The Golden Bachelor. Behind the glitz and glamour of the franchise’s first senior bachelor, however, lies a heart-wrenching love story that has left viewers touched and moved even before the show’s premiere.
Before Turner decided to throw his hat in the ring for the series, the 72-year-old from Indiana spent 43 years married to his high school sweetheart, Toni. The two first met while attending high school in Iowa. Turner played for the school’s basketball team, and Friday game nights were extra special to him because that meant he got to see Toni.
“All you can think about is that one person and how completely you are drawn to them,” Turner explained of his teenage courtship in a new interview with TheNew York Times. “And that was the feeling I had with Toni.”
By the time Turner was a junior at the University of Iowa, he and Terry were engaged. The couple raised their two daughters, Jenny Young and Angie Warner, and saved up for a lakefront retirement home as they did.
“I married my high school sweetheart, Toni, in 1972. We had 43 wonderful years together. We had two daughters, and I now have two wonderful granddaughters. We had a real typical but beautiful life, full of love, full of activity, and as years went on, I retired,” Turner explained during a sneak peek look of The Golden Bachelor, per Bachelor Nation.
Unfortunately, tragedy struck as soon as Turner and his wife moved into their golden years lakefront home. Toni fell ill with a bacterial infection.
“We had a plan and we had an idea of what our dream house was going to be. So when Toni retired at the end of May in 2017, we bought that dream house, and closed on it on June 6th. From June 6th on, it didn’t go according to plan at all. She became ill and her situation got worse over a couple of weeks,” Turner explained on the show.
“So we went to the emergency room and she had a bacterial infection that infected her kidneys and infected her liver. So I took my wife to the emergency room on July 7th. She passed away on July 15th. No one’s ever going to replace Toni, but the love of my daughters and my granddaughters pulled me out of a dark spot.”
After some initial hesitation, Turner applied to be on the show after seeing a call for older contestants back in 2020. The producers were quickly taken not only by his story of Toni, but by his warmth and genuine persona.
“I wanted to make sure that the story of my wife’s passing was told in a kind and sensitive way, and never sensationalized,” he said. “I really didn’t want to tell that story over and over. I wanted it to be out there for people to know, but I also wanted to move on,” Turner noted.
It truly seems like Turner does have his heart in the right place. Even though he has shared the tragic loss of his wife with the world, he does not want to become a sob story or sully Toni’s memory by sensationalizing her passing.
The Golden Bachelor premieres on ABC on September 28th.
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