At long last, ABC has revealed its first Golden Bachelor: Gerry Turner, a 71-year old grandfather from Indiana, will be the first senior to find love in the latest offshoot of The Bachelor. The widower, whose first name is pronounced “Gary,” says that as he steps up to the plate, he’s falling back on a long-held core belief.
“Don’t give up,” Turner told Good Morning America in an interview Monday. “There’s always possibilities.”
Turner, a blue-eyed pickleball enthusiast and retired restauranteur, spent 43 years married to his high school sweetheart, Toni—with whom he shares two daughters, Angie and Jenny. On GMA, Turner said that his late wife died six weeks after she began her retirement in 2017. “Every day that goes by,” Turner told GMA, he thinks that his wife was “robbed.”
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Still, he said, he believes that she’s “rooting” for him as he prepares to find love again on television. “I have her picture on a dresser in my closet,” he said on GMA. “Every morning I give her the nod, ‘So what do you think about this?’ ... We always told each other, when one of us goes, we want the other one to be happy.”
These days, the show’s official synopsis says, Turner “lives in his dream house on a beautiful lake in Indiana. He’s often busy hosting barbecues, playing pickleball, cheering on his favorite Chicago sports teams, four-wheeling, and spending time with friends and family at restaurants and local haunts.”
Bachelor obsessives have been waiting for The Golden Bachelor for more than three years. The franchise first issued a casting call for the spinoff in February of 2020, but ABC didn’t officially announce the series until this spring. The network is currently airing the 20th season of The Bachelorette, starring 27-year-old child and family therapist Charity Lawson.
As for what Turner is looking for in his next long-term partner? “I’d love it if I found a partner who was high-energy,” he told GMA. “Someone who’s fairly competitive,” and who enjoys sports.
“Someone that maybe plays pickleball, someone that maybe plays golf.”
