‘Golden Bachelor’ Star Gerry Turner Meets First Contestant in Explosive Premiere Preview: “We Started It With a Bang”
Gerry Turner’s run on the inaugural season of ABC’s The Golden Bachelor gets off to a memorable start with his first limo entrance, as seen in a preview video exclusive to The Hollywood Reporter.
The footage from the premiere that airs Thursday shows Turner, a 72-year-old retired restaurateur from Indiana, standing outside the Bachelor mansion as the initial limo of contestants arrives. The first woman to step outside and introduce herself is Edith Aguirre, a 60-year-old retired realtor from Downey, California.
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“My name is Edith, and my heart has just been waiting to meet you, so I’m so excited to be here,” she tells him after first saying hello in Spanish.
Turner tells Aguirre that she looks lovely before noting, “You know, we just made history. You’re the first woman out of the limo, and I’m the first Golden Bachelor.”
She then hands him a confetti cannon, and they each fire one into the air as the dual explosions commemorate the moment. “I am so excited,” Aguirre tells the camera. “I’ve been waiting so long just to get to meet him. It was so magical, and we started it with a bang.”
Aguirre is just one of the 22 women Turner will be meeting to start the first season of the much-anticipated dating series that focuses on finding love later in life. The contestants, who range in age from 60 to 75, include Patty Cuculo James, mother to former The Bachelor star Matt James.
Turner was married for 43 years to his high school sweetheart, Toni, who died in 2017 after battling a bacterial infection. He is the father to two daughters and grandfather to two granddaughters.
“What I look for at the age of 70 is different from what I looked for in high school and college,” Turner explained to host Jesse Palmer during the “Men Tell All” special from Charity Lawson’s recent season of The Bachelorette. “So, I believe I’ll find my person — the new person that will make me whole again. And I think we’ll knit a wonderful relationship. But I don’t think it’ll look like the relationship I had with Toni. And I don’t think it would be right to do it that way.”
The Golden Bachelor debuts Thursday at 8 p.m. and is followed by the two-hour Bachelor in Paradise season nine premiere.
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