‘Golden Bachelor’ Mel Owens Apologizes for Dissing Women Over 60

The star of the dating show for contestants 60+ had said he only wanted to date women between the ages of 45 and 60

Andre Ellington,

AARP

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Published August 05, 2025

mel owens smiling for a portrait, wearing a brown leather jacket

Maarten de Boer/Disney

Retired NFL player-turned-attorney Mel Owens, 66, the star of the second season of The Golden Bachelor (Sept. 24), has issued an apology for the controversial comments he made in June regarding how he feels about women over 60.

In an interview with Glamour magazine, he explained that a close friend from college, who is a 65-year-old woman, helped him realize how hurtful it was for him to say he only wanted to date women between 45 and 60 — and “if they’re 60 or over, I’m cutting them.” On the first season of the show, contestants were ages 60 to 75, and the entire point of the show is that people over 60 are still in the dating game.

“She said, ‘What you said was insensitive, and it’s just not who you are,’ ” Owens said. “My reference of dating was 39, 40 years old. I hadn’t dated in 26, 27 years. That’s what I told her.

“She goes, ‘It doesn’t matter. You’ve said some things that are just incredibly wrong.’ And I go, ‘I’ve got to apologize.’ ”

Owens said he didn’t realize his comments to In the Trenches podcast host Jon Jansen were upsetting. He also mentioned he “didn’t know anything about The Golden Bachelor ages” before going on the show.

“I had watched the first show [featuring younger contestants] when I was younger, when it first launched or something, in 2002, until my son was born,” he explained. “But then, when he was born, I didn’t watch it anymore. So when these people talk about, ‘Hey, this season and that season,’ I didn’t know the age range because I wasn’t watching it.”

“I think he will see the grace and the charm of women who are over 60 and the confidence they carry,” Gerry Turner, 73, the first Golden Bachelor, told Fox News.

Turner married Theresa Nist, 72, whom he met on the show, divorced her three months later, and is now dating retired teacher Lana Sutton, who is in her mid-50s.

“I’m thinking, to me, the age range was 45 to 60,” Owens told Glamour. “That’s my age range. I’m thinking that’s the gold years for me. My reference, again, was when I was dating at 39, 40. I hadn’t dated in 26 years, so I had no clue. And that’s why I said that comment. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. And I didn’t know that [Gerry] got married and then divorced. I didn’t know any of it.”

Owens also told the Golden Bachelor producers to “try to stay away from the artificial hips and the wigs, you know, that kind of stuff,” a remark he also apologized for.

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“I apologized to the women on the show. When I first walked in, I addressed it. I apologized to them. I said, ‘It was unfair, insensitive. I want to earn it back. Just give me the chance.’ And hopefully, these last two weeks, I earned some of that back.”

The news involving Owens follows the back-and-forth between divorced Golden Bachelor alums Nist and Turner, which took a nasty turn in June.

In an interview with iHeartRadio’s Almost Famous podcast, Nist responded to Turner’s claim that their marriage dissolved because he was diagnosed with Waldenström macroglobulinemia, an incurable but slow-growing form of blood cancer that mostly builds up in bone marrow.

“I was just so surprised that he even said that. I knew about the cancer a long time ago,” Nist said. “The way Gerry 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.

“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,” she added.

Her response came after Turner sat down with People magazine for an exclusive interview published in December 2024. He spoke about the difficulty of sharing his health diagnosis with his then-wife.

“When you are hit with that kind of news and the shock wears off, you realize what’s important to you,” Turner said. “I wanted my life to continue on as normal as possible, and that [meant] spending time with my family, my two daughters, my two son-in-laws, my granddaughters. And the importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority.

“And I hope that people understand in retrospect now that that had a huge bearing on my decisions, and I think probably Theresa’s as well.”

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