The Golden Bachelor is finally here — and Gerry Turner is more than ready.
During the Thursday, September 28, premiere, the 72-year-old lead opened up about his late wife, Toni, and why now is the right time for him to find love again.
“How lucky would I be to find a second true love in my lifetime? I’ve had one that was amazing, wonderful,” Gerry explained on the ABC show. “As years went on, I retired, we had a plan and we had an idea of what our dream house was going to be. So when Toni retired [at the] end of May in 2017, we bought that dream house.”
Gerry and Toni were high school sweethearts who wed in 1972. She died in 2017.
“She became ill and her situation got worse over a couple weeks. It was July 7, and I said, ‘Toni, we’re going to the emergency room,'” he continued. “I took my wife to the emergency room on July 7, and she never came home. She passed away on July 15. … I yearn for the second chance at life to fall in love again.”
While Gerry’s journey just kicked off, he told Us Weekly that he was surprised when he started to develop “strong feelings for several of the women.”
“In retrospect, I realized that in that particular moment, whenever it was — the setting was such that, ‘Yeah, it was easy to look at someone and tell ’em that you loved ’em.’ But once you get through it all and you look back, then you realize that there is just really one person that really meets the standard in all situations that you want it to be,” he said.
The Golden Bachelor airs on ABC Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET. For a recap of week 1, watch the video above.
