Yahoo Lifestyle Golden Bachelor’s Gerry Turner Shares Cancer Diagnosis That Informed His Split From Theresa Nist
The inaugural Golden Bachelor, Gerry Turner, has disclosed a cancer diagnosis that he expects will “clear up a lot of mystery around what happened back in February, March and April” of this year, leading up to his sudden split from wife Theresa Nist.
Turner and Nist had tied the knot in a live, televised Golden Bachelor ceremony on Jan. 4. Three months later, on the April 12 edition of Good Morning America, that newlyweds announced that they were filing for divorce.
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Sharing with People.com the lead-up to that decision, Turner says, “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” — namely, Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a rare, slow-growing blood cancer that affects white blood cells.
“Unfortunately, there’s no cure for it,” Turner tells People.com. “So that weighs heavily in every decision I make.” Including about his priorities in life.
In March, after his diagnosis became more definitive, Turner fully debriefed his bride on the situation. “[T]he conversation was brief and I think [Theresa was] a little bit awestruck by the news,” he recalls. “So understandable.”
Looking forward, “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 says. “The importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority.”
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