Bachelor Nation
Why Did ‘Golden Bachelor’s Gerry Turner & Theresa Nist Split? Everything They’ve Said
It’s been more than a year since Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist called it quits on their marriage after just three months. While he is now engaged to another woman, Lana Sutton, details of the exes’ split are coming to light ahead of the release of Turner’s upcoming book, Golden Years: What I’ve Learned from Love, Loss, and Reality TV.
Turner and Nist have publicly given very different reasons for ending their marriage. Scroll down for everything they’ve said, including Turner’s latest claims in his book and what Nist had to say in response.
When did Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist split?
Turner and Nist announced their divorce in April 2024, just three months after they tied the knot in a televised wedding. The pair had a whirlwind relationship, first meeting on The Golden Bachelor during summer 2023. They got engaged during the show’s finale, but could not go public with their relationship until it aired that November. The wedding took place about six weeks later.
The former couple shared the news of their breakup on Good Morning America.
“Theresa and I have had a number of heart-to-heart conversations and we’ve looked closely at our situation, our living situation, so forth,” Turner explained. “We’ve come to the conclusion mutually that it’s probably time for us to dissolve our marriage.”
Why did Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist split?
At first, Turner and Nist cited their living situation as the reason for their divorce. With him living in Indiana and her in New Jersey, they spent their relationship trying to decide where they would settle down. At first, they seemed to agree on neutral ground in South Carolina, but then Turner began to come around to the idea of possibly moving to the Garden State.
(Disney / John Fleenor)
In the end, they could not come to an agreement. “We looked at home after home, but we never got to the point where we made that decision,” Nist shared.
During an appearance on the Almost Famous podcast in November 2024, Nist clarified that the split didn’t happen just because of the “location thing.” While she didn’t want to say too much, she revealed, “You really can’t know somebody in four weeks. I’ll just say that. I don’t wanna say any more than that.”
While discussing her and Turner’s living situation, Nist said her ex-husband brought up the idea of them spending six weeks in Jersey, then six weeks in Indiana, and so forth. “I was willing to move. I wanted to have our big home where our family could come visit us. That was my idea because that’s what we had agreed upon,” she insisted, noting that the “six-week” switch was never previously discussed. “And then I guess, he loves his house, and I don’t blame him. He loves where he live,s and I want him to be happy.”
Turner expanded on the reason for the breakup during an April 2025 appearance on GMA. “I’m not so sure anything went wrong. We’ve had conversations, and I think our mutual, deep devotion to our families kind of reared its head in conversations, and we started trying to realize or trying to find that common ground, the commonality of where we could share a life and where we could share a home and so forth. Then, her being a brand new grandmother and me having gone through the loss of a spouse and feeling the support of my daughters, it almost created a situation where we recognized fairly quickly that we weren’t going to find that spot where we could be together. And I think more than anything that was it.”
He also said he saw “no red flags” in the relationship if their families lived closer to one another. However, he added, “But we were also so new to the relationship that we may not have uncovered that layer of the onion that could have been a problem yet.”
Did Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist split because of his cancer?
In December 2024, Turner revealed that he had been diagnosed with Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia during his marriage to Theresa at the beginning of the year. Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia is a form of bone marrow cancer with no cure (Turner still has not had any symptoms yet, he said in an October 2025 update).
After receiving the diagnosis, Turner said he wanted his life to be as normal as possible, which meant spending time with his daughters and granddaughters. “The importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority,” he admitted.
“I hope that people understand in retrospect now that [the diagnosis] had a huge bearing on my decisions and I think probably Theresa’s as well,” Turner continued, hinting that the cancer diagnosis was part of the reason for the divorce.
However, Nist disagreed. “[It] wasn’t a factor in the ending of the relationship, at least not for me,” she insisted. She also reiterated that there was more to the breakup than she’d shared publicly. “If that was something on his part, maybe, I don’t know,” she added. “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.”
Nist reiterated this on the Almost Famous podcast in June 2025. “In his mind, it factored into his decisions, so he just assumed that it factored into mine when it had nothing to do with it,” Nist explained. “I would have never left my husband over an illness.”
Did Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist split because of her career?
Ahead of his November 2025 book release, Turner spoke to Us Weekly about the divorce and said that Nist’s prioritizing of her career over their life together was partly to blame for the split.
“On the show, I asked Theresa if she was ready to quit her job. She said, ‘When I meet the right guy, I’m ready to end my career,'” Turner claimed. “What I heard was, ‘There is a woman who’s going to be willing to travel, to have some adventure to do, some things that I consider and that we should consider fun.’ And then after the show, she always went back to, ‘Well, I really want to keep working.’ And that just pretty much makes it an impossible situation.”
Turner also took some of the blame, adding, “I was a bad listener. I didn’t probe well enough, and that’s both for my sake and for Theresa’s. Had I been better at some of those areas, maybe there would have been a different end.”
Meanwhile, Nist responded to Turner’s book claims, specifically his admission that he felt “trapped” before they tied the knot. She also gave some insight into how Turner was treating her before they divorced. “I wish he had said something and just ended it. But at least now I understand why he was so hurtful to me so many times,” she said. “And I will say this. Those in glass houses should not throw stones. I do wish him all the best.”
