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As any fan of ABC’s reality dating show The Golden Bachelor knows, its star, Gerry Turner, 72, loves pickleball. So the pressure is on as eight of the nine remaining contenders for Turner’s hand, or at least his affection, have a group date to play pickleball at Westlake Athletic Club in Westlake Village, California, with Turner observing.
AARP is here on a hot August Saturday to watch the taping of this episode, which airs Oct. 19, and get a chance to chat with the blue-eyed bachelor and a few of the women vying for his heart.
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Turner (his first name is pronounced “GAIR-ee,”) is a retired restaurateur in Indiana whose high school sweetheart and wife, Toni, died suddenly in 2017 after 43 years of marriage. He has two daughters and two granddaughters who encouraged him, after he’d spent a few years dating unsuccessfully, to apply to become the world’s first Golden Bachelor. The show, a spin-off of the network’s hugely popular series The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, premiered on Sept. 28 with 22 contestants, all between the ages of 60 and 75.
Turner is required to send a few women home in each episode, as he begins to sense who may or may not be compatible. Then, in theory, the drama will end with Turner offering a marriage proposal to — or, perhaps more maturely, a declaration that he would like to continue to explore his compatibility with — one of the ladies.
But at this point in the show (the fourth episode) the women appear to like Gerry Turner very much — if they could just get more time with him. “He has beautiful blue eyes,” says April, 65, a therapist from Florida whose beloved significant other Ralphie passed away two years ago. “He’s very good looking. I mean, he’s very dreamy. What scares me is that he’s dreamy to everybody.”
“I like that he’s down-to-earth and compassionate,” says Nancy, 60, a retired interior designer from Alexandria, Virginia, when asked what she likes about Turner. But, she adds, “I haven’t had a one-on-one date. We have these little cocktail parties, and everybody gets a chance to go sit with him for maybe six minutes, eight minutes. And I’ve done that three times. So how would I know?”
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