Who is Theresa Nist? Golden Bachelor winner suffered tragedy and has high-flying job
Golden Bachelor winner Theresa Nist has a heartbreaking backstory that rivals Gerry Turner’s tragic wife, but now the pair have found love and are getting married.
Golden Bachelor fans were left in tears during an emotional finale which saw a shocking proposal.
ABC’s first-ever Golden Bachelor, Gerry Turner, won over all 22 of the 72-year-old’s suitors when he entered the mansion.
It came down to Theresa Nist and Leslie Fhima in the final, but Gerry decided he had a special connection with the New Jersey gal.
Theresa was featured heavily throughout the season, after nearly scaring Gerry to death by pretending she’d shown up naked during the premiere.
She also snagged the first one-on-one date with him, while angering a few women, namely Kathy, for bragging about her connection with the Golden Bachelor.
Bragging aside, Theresa and Gerry did connect pretty heavily throughout the season.
Theresa is from Shrewsbury, New Jersey, per her Golden Bachelor bio, which is about halfway through the state, near the beach.
Shrewsbery is a small town, settled in 1662, and Theresa talks lovingly of it in the first episode, which could be a problem for the couple.
It’s nearly an 11-hour drive from where Gerry lives in Indiana to New Jersey. If Gerry picks her, we’ll see how they’ll make it work.
Meanwhile, the 70-year-old works as a financial services professional, which is a little vague, but Women’s Health uncovered that she works at TFS Financial Services, Inc., as a senior compliance and operations liaison.
“Theresa began her career by trading her own account successfully, which gave her a great love of and appreciation for the markets. Theresa subsequently took key positions with Datek Online, Stifel Nicolaus and MetLife Securities, where she served as the manager of a large call center,” her company website bio reads.
Her ABC bio also notes that she “taught herself all about the stock market.”
Theresa’s birthday is August 4, 1953, which means she’s a Leo.
The year she was born, Harry S. Truman was president of the US, and I Love Lucy was a hit TV show.
Theresa’s bio says that she likes ‘70s rock “both soft and hard.”
On the social media front, the senior compliance and operations liaison appears to have an Instagram account where she posts lots of pics of her family, her garden, and other sweet moments from her life.
She posts about her children and six grandchildren, who call her “Nana.”
She has one son named Tommy, who has three sons, and a daughter, Jenny, who also has three boys.
“She is very close with her children and grandchildren, and loves nothing more than seeing them all thrive,” her bio reads.
Theresa and Gerry bonded over their kids during a pre-cupcake kiss in the first episode.
Gerry and Theresa also connected over losing their spouses, who both died tragically.
Toni was Gerry’s his high school sweetheart and wife of 43 years until she sadly passed away in 2017 after getting an infection.
Her cause of death according to the U.S. Sun, was cardiopulmonary failure, or cardiac arrest, as well as shock, sepsis, and renal (kidney) failure.
Meanwhile, Theresa was married to her husband, William “Bill” Nist, who was also her own high school sweetheart for 42 years.
He passed away in 2014 at 63 years old after suffering from an unspecified heart condition, and Theresa herself admitted during her week two one-on-one date with Gerry that his kidneys were what ultimately failed.
The similarity likely brought the two even closer together as they learned more about each other on the show.
