The Golden Bachelor star Gerry Turner made his franchise debut at the end of the Monday, August 14 episode of The Bachelorette: The Men Tell All and shared his hopes for the journey ahead.
Referring to a fan’s social media post calling him “the Grandzaddyyyyy,” the 71-year-old retired restaurateur from Indiana told host Jesse Palmer the woman he’s looking for will “just have that look in their eye like, ‘Oh gosh, I found my own Grandzaddy.'”
In response to the big question of whether or not there will be a fantasy suites, Gerry said, “I would say yes, but what they would look like might be a little different.”
“That’s a long way down the journey,” he continued. “And I think there’s a lot of steps that I and a potential partner would have to go through to get to that to make it a comfortable situation.”
Turner married his high school sweetheart, Toni, in 1974 and lived a full and happy life with their two daughters, and later two granddaughters, for 43 years until Toni’s sudden death in 2017.
When Palmer asked him if it was possible to find a love like that twice in a lifetime, Gerry replied, “I don’t think that’s what I’m looking for.”
“What I look for at the age of 70 is different than what I looked for when I was in high school and college. So, I believe I’ll find … the new person that will make me whole again. And I think we’ll knit a wonderful relationship, but I don’t think it will look like the relationship I had with Toni. And I don’t think it would be right to do it that way,” he explained.
The Golden Bachelor premieres in September on ABC.
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