“The Golden Bachelor” star Gerry Turner has cancer.
The 72-year-old shared the health news in an interview with People published Wednesday.
He said he received his diagnosis weeks before he split from his now-ex-wife, Theresa Nist, 71, earlier this year.
“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,” Turner revealed.
The reality star explained that he found out about his cancer after he finally went to an orthopedic surgeon for a shoulder injury from three years ago.
Turner said he was diagnosed with a slow-growing “bone marrow cancer” with a “really long name” called Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia.
“Unfortunately, there’s no cure for it. So that weighs heavily in every decision I make,” he said. “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.”
Turner confirmed he told Nist about his diagnosis in February. The couple announced their split in April.
“Certainly, it was hard for me,” he said of telling Nist. “But the conversation was brief and I think [she was] a little bit awestruck by the news. So understandable.”
He continued, “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. 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,” Turner explained. “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.”
Turner also said he hopes fans will look at his and Nist’s split “a little bit differently, that maybe it wasn’t quite a rash, fast decision that people thought,” now that he’s revealed his diagnosis publicly.
Nist told People that, from her perspective, Turner’s cancer diagnosis didn’t end their marriage.
“If that was something on his part, maybe, I don’t know. But no, that didn’t factor into ending the relationship,” she said. “Part of it was the distance, but that wasn’t the only part. That’s really all I will say.”
“I was extremely upset,” Nist said about learning of Turner’s cancer, adding, “He told me though, that it was the type of cancer that he would most likely outlive.”
“He’s a very positive person and I am too, and I know that he will do the best that he can to make this a positive experience,” Nist went on. “And I have every faith that is going to work out that way, that it’s going to be the type of cancer that will not affect his life and that he’ll live to be a very healthy old age.”
Turner and Nist shocked the world on April 12 when they announced they were getting divorced after three months of marriage. They made the emotional announcement on “Good Morning America.”
They said that they couldn’t agree on where to live together. Nist is from New Jersey, while Turner lives in Indiana.
“We just feel like it’s best for the happiness of each of us to live apart,” Turner said on “GMA.”
Nist was the winner of the inaugural season of “The Golden Bachelor” where Turner, a widower, stole America’s hearts.
Turner proposed to Nist over runner-up Leslie Fhima in Costa Rica on the finale, which aired in November 2023.
The pair got married in an ABC-televised ceremony Jan. 4.
