Swarts’ fellow ‘Golden Hour’ podcast host Susan Noles added that she thinks what the couple had “was real and they got caught up in a moment”
The Golden Bachelor’s Susan Noles and Kathy Swarts think Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist deserve privacy as they navigate their divorce.
“We all feel like we want to know more we should know more, they owe us more,” Swarts, 70, said on the April 19 episode of the Bachelor Happy Hour: Golden Hour podcast, which she cohosts with Noles, 67.
“I’m kind of with Ben Higgins on this,” she continued. “Do we really have a right to know more? I don’t think so. I think that what they did had to be so hard publicly, to do it all publicly and you know, for that, I admire their courage.”
Swarts pointed out that Nist, 70, and Turner, 72, put themselves out there in a major way on the inaugural season of The Golden Bachelor.
“These two did something very different than most people do,” she said. “They met in public, they dated in public, they got engaged in public, they got married in public and they’re now getting divorced in public.”
Noles then urged Bachelor Nation to be kind to Nist and Turner at this time.
“We watched them fall in love and I cannot deny that that wasn’t real,” said Noles, who officiated the live, televised Golden Wedding. “I believe it was real and they got caught up in a moment. Who are we to judge anybody out there? Who are we to judge? As I made a statement a couple days ago, it’s about being kind. Yes, I know the public, everybody was disappointed. We all are. But they have their reasons.”
Noles doubled down on the fact that, when she watched Nist and Turner say “I do,” it felt real.
“I did marry them in front of 11 million people and when I watched them say those vows, they meant what they said,” the TV personality emphasized. “So this isn’t a fake. I mean, a lot of people have different opinions. It was real. It was very, very real. And you have to admit that at 70-something years old, when reality hit and they had their discussions that it wasn’t going to work and they’re not going to waste their time.”
Swarts pointed out that, because the network didn’t know how The Golden Bachelor would perform with audiences, the first season had a shorter run than a typical Bachelor or Bachelorette season, which led to less time for Turner to get to know all of his suitors.
“Everybody had less time together to get to know everyone and then you know, they didn’t get to see each other very much,” Swarts said of Nist and Turner. “It was really like, it was like speed dating. And maybe they regret what they did — clearly it didn’t work out — but let’s just let them live.”
Swarts stated that because she and Noles “lived this romance” with Nist and Turner, “it’s difficult” to watch them break up.
“But they deserve the respect and the space to try to heal,” Swarts continued to Noles. “And I know when you and I talked about, at the wedding, I mean, we were sitting there crying, watching them and we were just so happy and quiet honestly, you and I both were envious that they had fallen in love.”
While Swarts understood “we all believe in fairy tales,” she recognized, “Life is not always a fairy tale.”
Still, that didn’t lessen her belief that love can be found on TV. “We believe in the show,” Swarts said. “We believe in finding love. And OK, it didn’t work out this time, but you know, hopefully the next time it will.”
Nist and Tuner announced on Good Morning America Friday, April 12, that they’d be ending their marriage after three months due to disagreements over where they would live. (Nist hails from New Jersey, while Turner resides in Indiana.)
“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,” the retired restaurateur said.
Nist, a financial services professional, added that she and Turner looked for homes together “but we never got to the point where we made that decision.”
As a result, Turner declared, “We feel like it’s best for the happiness of both of us to live apart.”
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