Gerry Turner Says Cancer Diagnosis Influenced Divorce From Theresa Nist, She Disagrees

The first Golden Bachelor lead, Gerry Turner, appeared to find love on the show with contestant Theresa Nist, and the pair married in a televised special in January ... but if you kept tabs on the couple after they wed, you likely know that their marital bliss was quite short-lived, culminating in divorce in April.

Reality TV love matches can certainly last – Congressman Sean Duffy met his wife, Rachel, on MTV's The Real World: All Stars way back in 1998, and they're still together – but a large share of "showmances" don't end well.

Such was the case with Gerry and Theresa, and when they announced their split on Good Morning America and after the fact, their explanation basically boiled down to both parties' reluctance to uproot their lives and pick a place to live together.

In June, Gerry alluded to the "distance" issue in relation to his quickie marriage and divorce to Theresa, "vagueposting" on Instagram about how his home state of Indiana was a great place to live.

That notion – that the Golden franchise leads and contestants are uniquely unsuited for long-distance relationships – soon made it over to the Golden Bachelorette's first season, and after fan favorite Pascal Ibgui self-eliminated from the top three, he spoke plainly about it.

Pascal was of the mind that the "golden" demographic of bachelors and bachelorettes was not nearly as unencumbered as their youthful counterparts, which he articulated in a characteristically colorful Pascal fashion:

"I said from the beginning, if you take a 25 to 30-year-old kid who doesn’t have a pot to pee [in], doesn’t own a car, who are in between jobs, who rent an apartment, who’s looking for an identity … it’s easy to say, ‘Hey, I’m going to move to LA, I’m going to move to New Orleans, and we’re going to make a living together.

"But when you are like me, established, I have a business, I have real estate, I have my friends, I have my routine, I have my health club, I have my connection … I ain’t going to move anywhere."

So wild and carefree are these imagined youngsters, they even lack the proverbial "window to throw it out of."

Pascal also later confessed to hoping for some younger potential matches, too, but he said it was mainly the distance thing, and his reasoning was extremely sound — in addition to real estate, those in their 60s and 70s often have children and grandchildren tying them to where they currently live.

When we covered Pascal's assessment in November, we pointed back to Gerry and Theresa's divorce, which was still chalked up to "the distance" alone:

"Fans of The Golden Bachelor might recall that Pascal's view is not all that speculative — 'where to settle' is exactly what tanked the franchise's first lead Gerry Turner's short-lived marriage to Theresa Nist."

Or so we thought.

Gerry And Theresa Gave Dueling Interviews To People

Gerry Said A Cancer Diagnosis Led To The Split, Theresa Said It Didn't

On Wednesday (December 11), Gerry featured in a People exclusive.

People reiterated the story-to-date: Gerry lived in Indiana and didn't want to move, and Theresa lived in New Jersey, and for some reason, she also didn't want to flee the Garden State.

Over Zoom, Gerry said there was something he'd yet to address, something he believed might "clear up a lot of mystery around what happened back in February, March and April" with respect to his very brief marriage to Theresa.

He continued:

"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."

Gerry and Theresa announced their split on April 12, the day he filed for divorce, and he said he was diagnosed with a blood marrow cancer known as Waldenström's macroglobulinemia at some point in or around the month of March.

He explained that his cancer diagnosis was not something that necessarily happened on a singular day, and rather, it unfolded over a longer period.

As for the medical news, Gerry said it factored into how he viewed the future, and he admitted that he didn't absorb it fully right away:

"Unfortunately, there's no cure for it. So that weighs heavily in every decision I make.

"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."

Gerry talked about his concerns around spending time with his kids and grandkids, which comes back to the distance problem, but also said that he and Theresa were both in shock as they processed the diagnosis — and he said he thought they were "judged" in an "unfair" way.

Public perception seemed to be why Gerry decided to disclose his diagnosis so long after the fact in the People interview:

"Hopefully [Golden Bachelor fans will] look at things a little bit differently, that maybe it wasn't quite a rash, fast decision that people thought. That there was something else going on."

However, literally 15 minutes after that article hit, People followed up with a companion piece.

It told Theresa's "side of the story," and she was pretty solid on the fact that Gerry's diagnosis "wasn't a factor" in their divorce, so far as she knew:

"If that was something on [Gerry's] part, maybe, I don't know. But no, that didn't factor into ending the relationship.

"Part of it was the distance, but that wasn't the only part. That's really all I will say."

The plot thickens.

Not only did Theresa acknowledge the severity of the news and opine it wasn't a major reason they split, she also coyly alluded to some other issue and refused to elaborate upon it.

It's impossible to say for sure what either party was thinking or to pinpoint Gerry's exact motivations for revisiting a three-month-long marriage 10 months after it ended.

But reading between the lines, it's hard to miss two things — Gerry focused a lot on clarification and fan judgment, and Theresa's response sounded like she perhaps felt her ex-husband was attempting to garner sympathy or launder his image, and she disputed his assertions gently.

Clearly, there was something neither Gerry nor Theresa wanted to talk about, as they both kind of implied it "was and wasn't" the oft-blamed "distance."

However, Theresa concluded by wishing Gerry well after their whirlwind divorce: "I wish him the best [and] I know that he was in a very difficult situation and that good things will come to him."