The Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner.Photo:ABC/Brian Bowen Smith
ABC/Brian Bowen Smith
As the first-everGolden Bachelor,Gerry Turneris looking for his second true love following the unexpected death of hiswife Toni.
Gerry and Toni became sweethearts in high school — but when the future husband and wife met, he actually wanted to ask out her best friend.
But “the best friend had absolutely no interest in me,” Gerry, 72, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I remember standing there, chatting with Toni, and talking about her best friend. All of a sudden, I thought, ‘Well, what the heck? This gal seems really nice and a good conversationalist.’”
Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner and his wife Toni.The Golden Bachelor ABC/ Instagram
The Golden Bachelor ABC/ Instagram
Gerry landed a date with Toni during his sophomore year and they went to a dance at the YMCA.
“Back then in Ottumwa, Iowa, which is where I lived, the big deal every Friday was a dance at the YMCA; there’d be a band and so forth,” he says. “So I asked Toni out the first time to a dance at the YMCA. We pretty much dated regularly for the next four or five years.”
They eventually tied the knot in 1972 and went on to welcometwo daughters, Jenny and Angie. Gerry pass his love of sports — he played baseball as a kid and basketball in high school and college — to his daughters, coaching their softball teams and taking them skiing.
He also remembers family boat trips on the Mississippi River.
“We had a lot of fun with that,” the retired restaurateur says. “We had a close group of friends who were boaters, all of us had young kids. We’d just tie a line onto their life jacket and tie a line onto the boat and just throw them over. They had a great time.”
When Toni retired from her job as a volunteer coordinator at a regional hospital, she and Gerry planned to buy a lake house and spend their golden years there. But weeks after closing on the home in Indiana, Toni got sick with a bacterial infection and died.
“She’d worked her whole life, getting to that spot where she deserved her time in retirement and her time of fun, and she got cheated out of it,” says Gerry. “That was the thing that always bothered me.”
Gerry had to put the pain behind him, telling PEOPLE: “The first lake house that we bought together, I sold that house as soon as another house came available on the lake that was comparable because I just couldn’t stand the memories of her being there — or, actually, not being there. I moved out of that house just to get away from those memories.”
Now Gerry continues to honor Toni in small ways throughout the year, but when the July anniversary of her death comes around, Gerry and his daughters take pause to talk about what Toni’s life would look like today.
“On the anniversary of her passing, Jenny and Angie and I always exchange thoughts like, ‘If she was here, this would be what she would be doing today,’ or ‘This is what she would be interested in,’” Gerry says.
Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner with (from left) granddaughter Payton Young, daughter Jenny Young, granddaughter Charlee Young and daughter Angie Warner.ABC/Brian Bowen Smith
“I know it sounds silly, but she was really good at making cinnamon balls at Christmas,” Gerry says. “She’d spend hours. They were delicious. So all of us, both girls and myself now, have decided that whatever we do on Christmas, we’re going to make cinnamon balls. She loved Christmas; she loved decorating and doing all that stuff.”
It took Gerry a few years to get back in the dating game but now, withhis family’s support, he hopes to find someone to spend the rest of his life with.
“Fate works in strange ways,” he says. “This is probably one of the strangest. But it’s worked out.”
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The Golden Bachelorpremieres Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.
source: people.com
