Key points
- Gerry Turner announced that he got engaged to his new girlfriend, Lana Sutton.
- The Golden Bachelor alum was previously married to show winner Theresa Nist.
- Nist and Turner announced their split in April 2024 and finalized their divorce two months later.
The original Golden Bachelor is getting hitched again.
Gerry Turner is engaged to his new girlfriend, Lana Sutton, he announced on Friday.
“We’ve got BIG news,” he wrote on Instagram alongside several photos showing off Sutton’s engagement ring. “The Golden Bachelor is OFF the market. I found my perfect match and she said ‘YES’. I love this woman.”
Turner and Sutton, a retired teacher whom the reality TV star met on Facebook, haven’t been shy about their romance. In April, both the Golden Bachelor alum and his new S.O. posted photos of their “first getaway” together in Charleston, S.C., and the following week they celebrated their next fun-filled trip, which included stops in St. Louis and Indianapolis (and a graduation ceremony).
“The past two months have been an absolute blast — travel, adventure, and quality time with two families,” Turner wrote on May 1. “Feeling grateful to have met such a kindhearted woman. What a partner!”
Since then, Turner and Sutton have traveled to London (to attend Wimbledon), Paris, and, this past month, the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.
“Was able to cross off a huge bucket-list trip this week!” Turner said. “Lana and I thoroughly enjoyed the majesty and raw power of Niagara Falls and all its peripheral attractions. Oh, Canada!”
Turner told PEOPLE in April that he and Sutton have traveled to a new city “pretty much every weekend,” adding, “Her level of adventure and mine are very similar.”
Turner’s engagement comes 15 months after he finalized his divorce from Theresa Nist, who won The Golden Bachelor in its inaugural season in 2023. The couple married in a televised ceremony in January 2024, but called it quits three months later.
“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, and we’ve kind of come to the conclusion mutually that it’s probably time for us to dissolve our marriage,” Turner said on Good Morning America in April 2024.
Later that year, Turner revealed that he had been diagnosed with a slow-growing bone marrow cancer, which he said contributed to his decision to break things off with Nist.
“I wanted my life to continue on as normal as possible, and that led me to believing that as normal as possible more meant spending time with my family, my two daughters, my two son-in-laws, my granddaughters,” he said at the time. “And the importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority.”
Nist, however, denied that Turner’s diagnosis played any role in their split. “It was a zero factor, zero. Absolutely,” she said. “I was just so surprised that he even said that. I knew about the cancer a long time ago. And the way Gary presented it to me was that, ‘The doctor said that I’m going to die of old age before this cancer gets to me.’ He bluffed it off, like it really wasn’t that important. And he had no symptoms, and he still doesn’t.”
She continued, “So we never had a conversation that said, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re sick. I can’t stay with you now. I have to leave.’ That never happened.”
Nist and Turner finalized their divorce in June 2024. “You really can’t know somebody in four weeks. I’ll just say that,” Nist said in a November episode of Ben Higgins and Ashley Iaconetti’s podcast, Almost Famous. “I don’t wanna say any more than that.”
