Gerry Turner got engaged to Theresa Nist during the season 1 finale of The Golden Bachelor on Thursday, November 30.
“When I woke up this morning, it was difficult. I had really mixed feelings, and I got to the point with the questions I had asked myself about, how did I get here? And is she the right girl? I came to the realization that you’re not the right person for me to live with,” Gerry told Theresa, faking her out before getting down on one knee. “You’re the person that I can’t live without. Theresa, I love you 1,000 percent. I’m never going to stop believing that every day I choose you. Will you marry me?”
Gerry, 72, proposed to Theresa, 70, after breaking things off with runner-up Leslie Fhima in an emotional moment.
Ahead of the romantic proposal, Theresa told Gerry she’s “madly” in love with him. “I feel that for us that life isn’t over, that the best is yet to come. I think you are the most wonderful man in the world. Now that I’ve found you, I don’t ever want to let you go. I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” she added.
Prior to the finale, Gerry told both Theresa and Leslie, 64, that he loved them. After Theresa’s hometown date, Gerry confessed his feelings for her to the cameras. “When I entered this journey, I wanted to find love. And for the first time since 1968, I know that I have fallen in love again,” he said, though he waited until the pair’s fantasy suite date to share the revelation with Theresa. “This is the love I’m looking for.”
Gerry exclusively told Us Weekly in September that following the conclusion of filming, he no longer believed that he was fully “in love” with multiple 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 you loved ‘em,’” he explained at the time. “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.”
The following month, Gerry divulged that he was initially hesitant about getting engaged on the show, but he changed his mind.
“As I was dating [before the show], I was looking for the person that I would spend the rest of my life with regardless of the label,” he told Us in October. “And as I got closer and closer to the process started in the show, I really kind of came to realize that I did indeed want to be married, that I wanted that commitment, that two-way street. And so as I got into the show, that was my objective.”
As for how he thought his late wife, Toni, would feel about how his journey ended, he speculated that she would be “excited” about the “good conclusion,” adding, “I was happy with how it turned out.”
Before popping the question to Theresa, Gerry went through a difficult breakup with Leslie. “He fell in love with multiple women all at the same time in different ways,” host Jesse Palmer teased to Us earlier this month. “Throughout the course of the season, [the goodbyes are] easily the most difficult part. And I think it usually is for most leads, but I think people are really going to see an emotional goodbye come the finale that they just haven’t seen yet. It’s pretty intense.”
