Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner Says He and New Girlfriend Have Been ‘Fantasy House Shopping’ 2 Months into Dating

• Former Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner married his final rose recipient Theresa Nist in January 2024, but the couple divorced three months later
• Turner revealed a new relationship with a retired educator named Lana earlier this month
• The reality star tells PEOPLE “there's a feeling of comfort” and “peace” with his new girlfriend

Gerry Turner and new girlfriend Lana’s relationship has taken off — literally.

The former Golden Bachelor, 73, tells PEOPLE that he and Lana have traveled somewhere new “pretty much every weekend” since they started dating in March, most recently flying to North Carolina to meet her parents.

“The first trip was to the Big 10 men's basketball tournament, and then we went to a volleyball tournament in Indianapolis area, and then we went to St. Louis,” Turner shares. “We went to a St. Louis Cardinals baseball game and now this trip to Charlotte — and that's all in the first 60 days! Her level of adventure and mine are very similar.”

In July, they’ll travel across the pond to go to Wimbledon in London and explore Paris. “We talked about it for a couple weeks and we decided to pull the trigger, so we're going!” Turner shares.

But the new couple also enjoys time at home in Indiana, where the retired educator lives about 20 minutes from Turner’s youngest daughter.

“We've hit a bucket of golf balls and we've walked the Monon Trail,” Turner says of how he and Lana have passed the time. “And the nice part there is, from her house to the town of Carmel where there's a couple of restaurants is about three and a half to four miles. So we walk three and a half or four miles, have a beer and an appetizer, walk three or four miles back. That fills up an afternoon pretty well.”

Typically, when he and Lana hit up a restaurant, “we'll look at a dessert menu before we look at a dinner menu” Turner says, adding that they’re both “both ridiculously addicted to desserts.”  

The reality star expects he and Lana will be spending more time at his lake house as the weather starts to warm up, but they’ve also been looking at properties to share together down the line.

“We've done a little bit of the fantasy house shopping, which has been nice trying to figure out if at some point we decide we want to buy a house together, if our styles and our tastes are the same,” Turner says. “And it turns out, yeah, they are pretty much the same.”

As for what the future holds for the duo, who have both been married twice before, Turner says “I don't know that either of us necessarily would be looking to get married, but we've also said that's not off the table.”

The TV personality adds that he and Lana have “come to the comfortable agreement that we both want a long-term committed permanent relationship,” and they feel like “we're in that now.”

Turner proposed to Theresa Nist in the November 2023 finale of The Golden Bachelor and the two tied the knot in a televised wedding six weeks later. They divorced in April 2024 because they couldn't agree on where to live, with Nist, 71, residing in New Jersey and Turner in Indiana.

After the divorce, Turner says he wanted to focus on dating women who lived two hours or less from him. “I wanted to find someone who, worst case scenario, I could travel two hours and see, or that she could travel two hours to be with me at my house,” he explains. “And that's mission accomplished with Lana.”

In fact, Lana living in Indiana played a big role in what drew Turner to her after she messaged him on Facebook — although the retired restaurateur admits he missed her first message since he receives so many these days.

“I ignore most of it, knowing that so many people will send a Facebook message and they're 100 or 1,000 miles away. That was a contributing factor on how I missed her first message,” Turner says.

But once he read that “she's an Indiana girl” who grew up about 20 minutes from where Turner lives, “I instantly of connected her to having the Midwest values and perspective on things,” he says. “And it turns out, it was exactly right.”

Turner says his and Lana’s “sense of humor and Midwest background all fit very nicely.”

“There's a feeling of comfort, there's a feeling of peace,” he continues. “I really feel like I can be myself around Lana and it's not a problem. There's a lot of those tangibles that make it work, but the intangibles of the feeling is really huge. I'm really in a happy place.”