The Golden Bachelor returned to the airwaves Wednesday, but only for a bit.
Gerry Turner, the star of the first “The Golden Bachelor” season was shown visiting with Joan Vassos on Wednesday’s episode of “The Golden Bachelorette,” offering advice to the 61-year-old widow.
The episode saw season lead Vassos questioning if she was ready to date, as she was still mourning her deceased husband, John, and interacting with men in the house who had also experienced loss. John and Joan Vassos were married for 32 years before he died of pancreatic cancer in 2021.
“It’s been way more of an emotional journey than I thought it would be very early on,” Vassos told Turner.
Vassos dropped out of Turner’s 2023 “Golden Bachelor” season to attend to her postpartum daughter.
What did Gerry Turner say to Joan Vassos on “The Golden Bachelorette”?
Turner’s first wife, Toni, wife died in 2017, shortly after the couple had moved to Indiana.
Turner mentioned her often during his season.
“She was with me a lot during my journey because I would remember all the good things. And I had learned to celebrate her life rather than being that sorrowful,” he said to Vassos. “And I know it’s been much sooner for you. It’s gonna be a lot tougher for you than it was for me. And it was tough for me. So you want to be careful, you’re not trying to find John 2.0.”
Turner, 73, told Vassos, “You’ve got to let the guard down.”
“Take a breath and be yourself. Because I think when you put that much pressure on yourself like you have been, it will influence some of your decisions, and you want those decisions to really come from your heart.”
He asked Vassos if she’d considered that her match might not be in the house and said he thought she would find love on the show, but “she has to be completely vulnerable. She has to say here I am with all my warts. You can’t be perfect. Be yourself.”
At the end of the five-minute scene, Turner remembered their time together during “The Golden Bachelor.”
“I will always have a little bit of a special connection to you because of what we had at that brief date. It was wonderful,” he said.
There was no mention of Turner’s ex, Theresa Nist.
Turner proposed to contestant Nist on the season finale of “The Golden Bachelor” and the couple got married on live TV; but divorced three months later, saying they couldn’t agree on where to live together. Turner lived in Indiana when “The Golden Bachelor” premiered. Nist lives in New Jersey.
Turner and Theresa Nist were last on ABC as a couple when they appeared on a July episode of “Celebrity Family Feud.”
Their briefly blended family recorded the show just days before announcing their split.
They won $25,000 for the University of Iowa Stead Family Children’s Hospital.
How to watch “The Golden Bachelorette”
Episodes air on ABC Wednesday at 8 p.m. Eastern and stream the next day on Hulu.
