Redeem now - Gerry Turner, a 72-year-old widower, proposed to Theresa Nist on the season finale of "The Golden Bachelor."
- Gerry's proposal had been teased since the start of the show.
- Here's what to know about Gerry's engagement, upcoming wedding special, and breakup with Leslie.
Watching 72-year-old Gerry Turner fall in love on this season of "The Golden Bachelor" has been a reality-TV viewing experience like no other. The septuagenarian comes across as kind, romantic, and emotionally available, and his tearful admission that he wasn't expecting to find the kind of love he shared with Toni, his wife of more than 40 years who died suddenly in 2017, melted hearts everywhere.
This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in.Fans of "The Golden Bachelor" can rest easy: during the season finale, which aired Thursday, Gerry proposed to 70-year-old Theresa Nist. Gerry was torn between two women — Leslie Fhima, a bubbly dancer from Minnesota, and Theresa, a financial-services specialist from New Jersey, but ultimately proposed in Costa Rica to Theresa, who happily accepted.
During the live portion of the finale, host Jesse Palmer told the couple they're sending them on a trip to Italy, which led Gerry to reply with some even bigger news.
"We can use that as our honeymoon trip because we are going to get married," he said. "We're going to do it as quickly as we can because, at our age, we don't have a lot of time to waste. As quickly as we can put together a wedding plan, we're getting married."
The wedding will air live on ABC on January 4 at 8/7 central.
All this came after a heartbreaking split with Leslie, who'd been open with Gerry about her struggles to find love after two marriages. "I was devastated," Leslie told Palmer of the breakup during the "After the Final Rose" special. "I haven't fallen in love with someone in a really long time, so it was hard."
While details about who Gerry proposed to were kept largely under wraps for most of the season, it was evident that he definitely got engaged to someone.
Gerry said during a recent interview that he was happy with how his season turned out
"I feel confident in the decisions I made all along the way. Sometimes the right thing to do is the hardest thing to do, and there was a lot of anxiety, a lot of painful moments, but they were still handled the right way," Gerry said in a roundtable interview attended by Business Insider ahead of the "Women Tell All" taping, adding: "I think I still made the right decisions."
When pressed on if he was happy with how his season ended, Gerry said he'd been asked that question by the press before in various ways.
"I really hate giving up too much because I think some of the joy of this and watching it is building [on the story] from one episode to the next,'" he said. "But I can answer it this way: I believe the journey and the process I went through was good and successful."
Fans were a little bit emotional over Gerry's 'Golden Bachelor' journey
BI also asked Gerry how he felt about the overwhelmingly positive reactions to his season — including some fans who feel so protective of him that they're hesitant to watch him get hurt on the show. (Some previews for the season included several heartbreaking clips of Gerry sobbing.)
"You got to be a little tough to get to 72 years of age, so rest assured to all of those who feel that way, I can still hold my own," Gerry told BI.
"It's sometimes easy to confuse kindness with weakness, and I will at all times try to be kind to the people I'm involved with, but that doesn't mean that it's a weakness," he added.
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