Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist Didn’t Agree on Her Job Before Divorce

The Golden Bachelor’s Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist shocked Bachelor Nation last week with the news of their divorce, and fans are now starting to think the separation had something to do with Theresa’s job.

During an interview on the Dear Shandy podcast at the end of March, Turner, 72, and Nist, 70, shared a “hurdle” they were facing in their day-to-day lives, which was, in Nist’s words, related to her job.

“I still work, so that’s the hurdle,” she said.

The financial services professional admitted that she told her employer prior to going on The Golden Bachelor last year that she’d “be back in two weeks.”

“When I went on the show… I’m a very, very loyal person and I had no idea what lay in store for me, that I would be on this show for so long,” she said. “I honestly thought, ‘Oh, let me just get through the first night.’ And I stayed and I stayed and I stayed, and my employer was so good to me.”

Turner, a retired restaurateur, said at the time that he goes “through phases” about how he feels about Nist’s career.

“I guess the difficult part is, I went on to the show to find my partner, and I’ve been retired for a long time. I wanted fun, adventure. I wanted to go and do. So that is the crux of it, right now, is – when does that start?” he asked.

Nist clarified that she doesn’t intend to work for many more years — setting 80 as a hard line — but right now, her work remains a major part of her life.

“Right now, it’s a long-distance relationship, essentially,” she continued, before sharing another one of the issues she and her husband were facing: their big move. “So yeah, until we decide on a place to really live, then I can really make a big decision to say, ‘OK, we’re going to live in this place or that place.’ And originally, it was South Carolina. We’re still not sure if that’s what it is.”

Turner’s opinion differed. “I think the living arrangement is really secondary to the freedom of being able to go and enjoy life and do,” he said after Nist deemed that deciding where they’d live together would come before her deciding about her job.

The couple announced that they were separating in a joint interview on Good Morning America on April 12. That same day, Turner submitted a petition to Pike Circuit Court in Indiana to dissolve the marriage.

“Theresa and I have had a number of heart-to-heart conversations, and we’ve looked closely at our situation, our living situation and 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.

They admitted that the distance between them — Turner was living in Indiana, while Nist was in New Jersey — is what proved to be the dealbreaker. “We looked at home after home, but we never got to the point where we made that decision,” she said of their efforts at moving in together. 

“The thing that strikes me the most in our conversations — it’s been how dedicated both of us are to our families,” the Golden Bachelor star said. “So we look at these conversations and we both think it’s best for the happiness of each of us to live apart.”

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On April 15, Nist shared her first statement about the divorce on Instagram, calling her relationship with Turner “one of the most incredible experiences of my life.”

“I truly thought it was going to last forever. It turns out, even at the age of 70, you don’t know everything,” she wrote in the lengthy caption. “For everyone else who is confused and angry and who does not understand, please try to find it in your heart to understand and to try a little kindness.”