WASHINGTON — Gerry Turner, "The Golden Bachelor," has revealed he was diagnosed with cancer just weeks before his sudden divorce from Theresa Nist.
Turner proposed to Nist in 2023 on the inaugural season of ABC's dating show "The Golden Bachelor." The couple were then married in a live TV wedding in early January 2024, but announced just three months later they were getting divorced.
Turner, 72, said at the time the distance proved to be a problem and they couldn't settle on a place to live together.
But now "The Golden Bachelor" star revealed to PEOPLE on Wednesday that after the wedding he was diagnosed with a blood disorder in February, which some weeks later was confirmed to be a slow-growing "bone marrow cancer" called Waldenström's macroglobulinemia.
"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 explained to PEOPLE. "And the importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority."
"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 told the outlet. "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."
While Turner suggested to PEOPLE the cancer diagnosis played a part in the couple's divorce, Nist says it wasn't a factor in the ending of the relationship, at least not for her.
"If that was something on his part, maybe, I don't know. But no, that didn't factor into ending the relationship," she explained to PEOPLE. "Part of it was the distance, but that wasn't the only part. That's really all I will say."
Nist told PEOPLE they decided to move together to Charleston, South Carolina, but Gerry then later said he wanted to do six weeks where he currently lived in Indiana and six weeks in South Carolina.
While their divorce may have seemed sudden, the majority of the couples who have met on "The Bachelor," "The Bachelorette" and "Bachelor in Paradise" split up before they get married.
