The fallout from Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist’s breakup has outlasted the first Golden Bachelor couple’s three-month marriage. Though the two presented a united front when they announced their split in April 2024, they aren’t on the same page anymore. Turner brought their relationship back into the spotlight while promoting his new memoir, Golden Years, and Nist is now publicly disputing his recollections of their time together.
Theresa’s Response To Gerry’s Memoir
When Golden Years released on Nov. 4, Turner wasn’t the only one with something to say. Nist was a guest on the Nov. 4 episode of the Dear Shandy podcast, where she disagreed with many of her ex-husband’s claims. “Not one of the stories that I have read is the way it happened,” she said.
In an Entertainment Weekly article a day prior, she addressed an excerpt from Turner’s memoir in which he described an uncomfortable first visit to her home in Shrewsbury, New Jersey, following their wedding. He recalled feeling like “a trespasser in her home” and said she had him sleep on the couch for three nights.
“When I arrived in Shrewsbury, it should have been an awesome trip,” Turner wrote. “This was our first time together that we didn’t have to hide. We were married. It should have been a frickin’ honeymoon!”
Offering another perspective, Nist told Us Weekly, “I’m not sure if Gerry has a faulty memory or if he just wanted a more dramatic story for his book.” In her recollection of their first visit, they spent one night together in her full-size bed and he offered to sleep on the couch afterward because she wasn’t able to get any sleep. She said she promised to get a king-sized bed before his next visit — and then did so.
“I was so happy that we now had a wonderful bed to sleep together in, but Gerry never returned,” Nist told the outlet.
Post-Breakup Tension
There have been signs of discord between Turner and Nist leading up to his memoir’s release. In October, Turner told Us Weekly that they’d agreed to “protect each other” and he didn’t “feel like that happened.”
“I felt like I was taking the brunt of the situation,” he said. “And I go, ‘No, wait a minute, that’s not right. It’s 50/50.’”
He went on to say that he wasn’t worried about Nist reading his account of their relationship but felt she “should be worried.”
Just days after his Us Weekly interview was published, Nist made a cheeky TikTok with another one of Turner’s Golden Bachelor exes, runner-up Leslie Fhima. The two women lip-synced together, “To be honest, I don’t know what happened, but we need a redo.”
Reflecting on Turner’s memoir on Dear Shandy, Nist shared that his retelling was what prompted her to speak on the ins and outs of their marriage.
“I would have never said anything,” she said. “I was keeping this all to myself. I was never going to say a word of this, but when someone accuses you of things that you didn’t do and recounts stories in ways that it didn’t happen … there’s so many things.”
