NEED TO KNOW
Gerry Turner is reflecting on the moment he realized his first wife “didn’t want anybody” to know about a health diagnosis after her 2017 death.
In his new book, Golden Years: What I’ve Learned from Love, Loss, and Reality TV, the 74-year-old Golden Bachelor alum looked back at the time he “started to go through” Toni’s things after she died of a bacterial infection that summer.
“Tucked away in the back of a bathroom drawer, in a clear sign that she didn’t want anybody to uncover what was in there, I found evidence that she had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes,” Turner wrote.
He added, “There was literature, prescriptions, a blood glucose meter, and other supplies — all apparently untouched and unused. She’d never mentioned this big diagnosis to me or her daughters, and, as far as I could tell, she’d never followed through with treatment.”
Brian Bowen Smith/ABC
The discovery, Turner wrote in his book, had his mind reeling with “what-ifs.”
“Untreated or unmanaged diabetes stresses the body, particularly the kidneys,” he wrote. “Had Toni had the means to live longer, but been undone in the end by the belief that any kind of whining was frivolous? Had I somehow contributed to this mentality? Why hadn’t she felt comfortable confiding in me about something as important as having diabetes? The loss of any loved one is sad. But to think it might have been possible, no matter how remotely, for her to have lived longer or still be alive today, is even more painful.”
Turner emphasized that the “saddest” part about Toni’s death is that she “didn’t feel safe enough to tell anyone the truth of what was happening with her.”
Turner previously opened up to PEOPLE about his love story with his late wife back in 2023, noting that they were high school sweethearts, wed in 1972 and welcomed two daughters, Jenny and Angie. She died just weeks after they bought a lake house together in Indiana in July 2017.
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“She’d worked her whole life, getting to that spot where she deserved her time in retirement and her time of fun, and she got cheated out of it,” Gerry said. “That was the thing that always bothered me.”
“On the anniversary of her passing, Jenny and Angie and I always exchange thoughts like, ‘If she was here, this would be what she would be doing today,’ or ‘This is what she would be interested in,’ ” Gerry added of how they honor Toni’s memory now.
Turner later found romance again with Theresa Nist while filming The Golden Bachelor in August 2023 before they called things off in April 2024 after having filed for divorce. The pair revealed their decision to split during an interview on Good Morning America on April 12, 2024.
Turner has since gotten engaged to his new partner, Lana Sutton, who he started dating in the spring.
