Golden Years, page 33
Author’s Note: This is true to what I believe happened. I have changed names and some descriptions. And I have reconstructed dialogue to the best of my recollection and reordered or combined the sequence of some events. Others who were present might recall things differently. But this is my story.
Copyright © 2025 Gerry Turner
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2025930252
ISBNs: 9781538772102 (hardcover); 9781538772126 (ebook)
E3-20250801-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword, from the P-ball Gang of CLC
CHAPTER 1: The First Proposal
CHAPTER 2: Drinking from a Fire Hose
CHAPTER 3: The One Who Got Away
CHAPTER 4: Playing Whac-A-Mole with My Feelings
CHAPTER 5: I Love You… and You… and Maybe You?
CHAPTER 6: Last Chances
CHAPTER 7: The Tarnished Golden Bachelor
CHAPTER 8: From World-Class Wedding to Lumpy Sofa
CHAPTER 9: Blood, Bones, and Backlash
CHAPTER 10: We Are Not Invisible
Photos
Acknowledgments
Discover More
About the Author
Just like the debris during a late-summer Midwestern tornado, so did the chaotic events of my journey as the first Golden Bachelor swirl in my life. The constants that kept my feet on the ground were the connections with my daughters, my granddaughters, and my true close friends. So it is only fitting that I dedicate this book and all the effort poured into it to the following:
Daughters
Jenny Young
Angie Warner
Granddaughters
Payton
Charlee
Dear Friends
Brad & Sandi
John & Sandy
Kerry & Leann
Sonny & Deb
Jim & Lynn
Dean
Sherry
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FOREWORD
OUR INTRODUCTION TO GERRY TURNER began with a nondescript chance meeting at a small Midwest town’s pickle-ball court late in the summer of 2021. He was very personable and friendly, with a warm sense of humor, and we immediately accepted him into our group, bonding over our newfound love for this sport known as pickleball.
We would never have thought life events and pickleball would make us such close-knit friends. We originally just hoped we would get a bit of exercise and a lot of socialization all at once, but we quickly learned we could play together, travel together, and trust one another at the highest level. As time passed, the trust Gerry placed in us, and we in him, was intimate and unconditional.
As our group evolved, Gerry mentioned that, at his daughters’ suggestion, he had submitted his application to be on a TV reality show for older bachelors. The men in our group barely knew anything about The Bachelor, and the women had only watched a few seasons of The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. Since Gerry was our only single member, he was the only one qualified to be the “Golden Bachelor,” and, as Gerry’s father so eloquently put it… “Well, somebody’s gotta do it.” The level of intrigue and suspense increased daily as we waited to find out if our dear friend was actually going to be the first-ever Golden Bachelor.
As soon as we learned that Gerry was being considered for the first Golden Bachelor, we felt strongly he had an excellent chance of being chosen. He was exceptionally outgoing, laid-back, smart, and well preserved for a seventy-two-year-old man. Why would they pick anyone else? Beyond that, Gerry was genuinely excited for the opportunity to begin the journey to find his next soulmate after the passing of his wife, Toni, and we were excited for him.
We lost contact with Gerry for nearly six weeks during the summer of 2023 while the filming progressed, and we missed his banter, his energy, and his competitive spirit. We were concerned for our friend, as we knew he was entering a world completely unknown to any of us: Hollywood, TV appearances, notoriety. Would he even remember his old pickleball group here in the Midwest? But that fear was counter-balanced by our belief that Gerry was mentally strong and even excited to accept any challenge Hollywood presented to him.
Through numerous Thursday-night watch parties, our group became even closer. When Gerry’s schedule could accommodate attending these viewings, we always appreciated his candid insights. He was constantly concerned with what the women on his season of the show were feeling as he made choices that would impact so many lives in real time. We knew his decisions about whether a woman would continue on the journey or go home would be heart-wrenching for him. Were they made from pure emotion, or calculated reasoning? Maybe a combination of the two. But we saw the pain on his face at every rose ceremony.
It was difficult for us to watch Gerry negotiate multiple uncomfortable situations. As the filming moved forward, we could only assume he had regrets, and this book will highlight several. However, we were convinced he was always looking positively to the future, knowing he was growing through his experiences.
Gerry has made a big impact on our lives, and we owe him a debt of gratitude. This book reveals so much more of his story than we ever could have imagined, despite how well we thought we knew our friend. Gerry shares his insights, not only from his months deep in his Bachelor experience, but also into his life of being open and vulnerable—a rare and refreshing way to live. We were able to enjoy much of the Golden Bachelor experience through his eyes because of our friendship. We were with him in the first moments of his journey when the ABC production crew came to our little Indiana town and filmed all of us having a great time playing pickleball. And, yes, we were all there with him in Palm Springs, California, as the night of his nationally televised wedding to Theresa Nist drew to a close. Physically we were with him for some of his journey, but emotionally we were with him every step of the way. We are proud to call Gerry Turner our friend.
The P-ball Gang of CLC
CHAPTER 1
THE FIRST PROPOSAL
“I CAN’T BELIEVE WHAT jackasses these guys are,” one of my daughters texted.
“I can’t believe how short their pants are!” I texted back.
On a cold Midwestern winter night in 2020, my group chat with my two adult daughters was running hot. Only halfway into the evening’s episode of The Bachelorette, we had already dissected everyone’s personality and wardrobe choice. Although this was my first time following a season of the long-running reality dating franchise, I was starting to get a hang of the antics that ensue when a person searches for a soulmate on network TV.
Of course, I had heard of The Bachelor and its many spin-offs before Tayshia Adams’s quest for true love became appointment TV for me. I wasn’t living under a rock. My interest in the show, however, had begun during a family visit to my daughter Jenny’s house earlier that year. I had been surprised to discover that my son-in-law Jon, a real man’s man, was a fan. My other daughter, Angie, Jenny, my granddaughters, and Jon were all gabbing about who had kissed whom, who they thought was the right pick, and who was the most immature man-child of the bunch. “All right,” I thought. “If Jon can watch a season of The Bachelor, so can I.”
In general, I’m a joiner. And when it comes to my family, I always want to be a part of the fun. This has never been more true than during the pandemic, when I was sequestered at home. My daughters were cautious and concerned about visiting, because they didn’t want to expose me to anything picked up at school or work. So our Bachelor dates took on an outsize importance. It was one of the few things I had to put on my weekly calendar that I looked forward to.
When The Bachelorette began airing in the fall of 2020, I began tuning in and texting with the girls. I don’t know what I liked better, satisfying moments like Bennett getting the smug expression wiped from his face when the phlebotomist from California sent Mr. Harvard home or my daughters’ candid wit and wisdom in our text thread about the show each week. While I was not too invested in the main purpose of the show—two people eventually finding a lasting match—it did remind me of my soulmate, and the fact that she was no longer by my side. Whenever I saw a gleam of excitement in a contestant’s eye or an authentic embrace, my chest grew heavy. These images of new love reignited the loneliness I felt after the passing of my wife, Toni.
Mostly, though, it was a point of connection with my daughters. By the winter, I had a real feel for the show and was giving Angie and Jenny’s trash talking a run for their money. At the end of the episode we were watching on that winter night, the network flashed a message to “seniors looking for love.” A request for candidates for the part of the “Senior Bachelor” had run repeatedly throughout the episode. We had been too busy trading snarky texts about the contestants on the show to comment earlier, but when the notice appeared on the screen right after the episode, Angie texted, “Dad, you should do that!”
Me?
I got up from the couch and took a look at myself in the closest mirror. I was wearing a grubby old shirt and hadn’t had a haircut in at least six weeks. My beard had grown scruffy. Aftershave? More like afterthought!
“Who in the hell would be interested in seeing this face on TV?” I thought.
Self-care wasn’t exactly at the top of my to-do list. It had been nearly three years since I’d lost the love of my life, and I didn’t feel all that far along in the grief process. It’s hard to move on after forty-three years of a wonderful marriage, especially when the two of you had been together since you were teenagers, like Toni and me.
In 1969 I was a senior at Walsh, a small Catholic high school in Ottumwa, Iowa. With only slightly over three hundred students in the entire school, no one was a complete stranger. But I didn’t get to know Toni, a junior, until I volunteered to work on the high school play. I had zero interest in theater and was only there because of a girl. And that girl wasn’t Toni. In fact, it was her best friend.
Despite my best attempts at getting this girl’s attention, and a date, she had absolutely zero interest in me. But while moving scenery and sets backstage, Toni and I got to talking a little. On the face of it, we didn’t have a lot in common. The class clown, most comfortable in front of a crowd, I was on the basketball, baseball, and debate teams. Artistic and seemingly shy, Toni had a circle of good friends she stuck close to. In the beginning, I had to work pretty hard to get that conversation started. Once it started, it was great. She had noticed me playing in basketball and baseball games, and I could feel myself growing taller just knowing she had thought of me. It was exciting to have a girl interested in me, which I felt from the way she looked at me with her big brown eyes. Soon I was asking her to dances. We went together to almost every Friday-night dance that year at the YMCA or the Ottumwa Coliseum. Some students from my grade had a band that, after playing a couple of our high school dances, graduated to the Coliseum, where they performed not only for the Catholic-school kids but also for the public. We danced nonstop to covers of popular bands like the Beatles, the Monkees, and the Dave Clark Five. Toni, who had natural rhythm and confidence, was a very good dancer. I was more methodical, always counting in my head to the beat. I think I still do that when I try to dance. If Toni minded my plodding moves, she didn’t show it. The best were the slow dances, when it felt like she was melting into me. When we slow-danced at school, the nuns patrolling the floor to make sure there was enough space between partners singled us out more than once.
Our relationship blossomed over the course of those dances, and by the following year—after I enrolled as a freshman at a local junior college and Toni began her senior year of high school—we had tunnel vision for each other. Everyone else fell away. Neither of us could imagine being with anyone else.
Because we were so young, our parents were a bit of an obstacle. Toni’s parents turned out to be very supportive, but my mom was the opposite. A difficult woman with struggles of her own, my mother did everything she could to drive a wedge between Toni and me. She tried her hardest to play matchmaker between another high school student and me, going as far as talking to the girl’s mother frequently about what a great couple we’d make. When that didn’t work, she tried to prevent me from seeing Toni. On days when she knew we had a date after a game, my mother would make up some important reason I had to be home or, without explanation, change my curfew so that I had to cancel with Toni.
When she understood her passive-aggressive tactics weren’t working, she made her disapproval as plain as day. “If you even think about getting married before you are of age,” she said, “I will absolutely not sign any document giving permission.”
Challenge accepted. I knew I loved Toni and wanted to spend my life with her. But there’s nothing like a parent standing in your way to make you even more ardent. We were Romeo and Juliet! Minus the double suicide. So with help from Toni’s parents, we found out we could get married in the state of Missouri without permission and threatened to do just that. Realizing that stomping her feet and throwing a fit would do nothing but leave her on the outs with me, my mom relented.
There was no grand gesture when I proposed. I suggested we stroll downtown to do a little window-shopping. We arrived at Bookin’s, the jewelry store where Ottumwans had purchased their engagement rings for nearly a hundred years, and as casually as I could despite my nerves, I suggested, “Why don’t we go in?” We spent a little time looking at wedding rings until I got a good feel for what she liked. We knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together and had discussed it with our parents, but the ring would symbolize putting the plan into action. We were young and didn’t know how all the wedding logistics really worked, like obtaining a marriage license—and back then you couldn’t just google it. Not long after, I took Toni to a high school sporting event, after which we grabbed a burger. It was there at the Canteen that I asked her to marry me with a ring I had brought at Bookin’s for seven hundred dollars, which was a fortune for me. Luckily, the store had a long-standing practice of letting customers establish a payment plan with as little as sixty dollars down, which was good for me since I was living on a tight budget.
I always made my own money. In high school, I worked first at the McDonald’s in town, which was owned by the father of one of my basketball teammates, and then at a grocery store that paid a little better. After two years of junior college, I moved to Davenport, Iowa, where I worked in military drafting at Rock Island Arsenal. I lived in a small trailer with a big guy, a shot-putter no less, who also worked at the arsenal. We split expenses. My life was working, eating, sleeping, and getting in the car as soon as it was quitting time on Friday to drive back to Ottumwa to spend the weekend with Toni. I drove through some hellish snowstorms just so I could be with her (and get out of that trailer).
About eight months after I proposed, Toni and I were married in a small, simple affair at St. Mary’s, followed by a reception in the church basement for which all the guests brought a dish to share. At the time, I was so poor I didn’t even own a TV. When I saw one among the wedding gifts (a present from Toni’s parents), I told my bride, “When we leave tonight, that TV is coming with us.” The TV symbolized a new life. No longer was I going to be a bachelor crammed into a bare-bones trailer eating spaghetti elbow-to-elbow with another man. I was going to have a wife and a home where we would sit down to dinner and then get to watch some TV together. I couldn’t wait.
After our honeymoon—also on a shoestring; it was a two-hour drive to Des Moines, where we spent one night at a hotel—we settled in Davenport, where I worked and took classes off and on at the University of Iowa. Even though I had enough credits to qualify as a junior, I decided to put school aside to focus on making a living. Leaving college is one of my biggest regrets. I wanted to be a lawyer and loved studying law, but I knew that going to law school would be a major financial struggle and impossible if we started a family. I made the romantic choice, and it was absolutely the right one. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would find fulfillment beyond my wildest dreams.
