The Golden Bachelor is a new spinoff of The Bachelor franchise that will feature senior citizens looking for love. The show will premiere in the fall on ABC and will have a male lead and female contestants who are over 60 years old. The Golden Bachelor is the first time in the franchise’s history that older people will be the focus of the dating show.
On Monday, Gerry Turner, a 71-year-old grandad from Indiana, will star as ABC’s first-ever senior citizen sexy leading man when he searches for love on television this fall.
The upcoming series will showcase a “whole new kind of love story — one for the golden years,” per ABC’s synopsis, which says a “hopeless romantic is given a second chance at love in the search for a partner with whom to share the sunset years of life.”
The spinoff will air this fall on Mondays at 10 p.m.
This new twist to ABC’s long-running dating show franchise, departs from the long-established formula which for two decades has mostly centered around 20-something and 30-something casts.
Turner is described by the network as a “charming 71-year-old patriarch,” who will show that love stories “only get better with age.”
A retired restaurateur and devoted father and grandfather, Gerry (pronounced like “Gary”), lives in his dream house on a beautiful lake in Indiana. He’s often busy hosting barbecues, playing pickleball, cheering on his favorite Chicago sports teams, four-wheeling and spending time with friends and family at restaurants and local haunts.
Turner is no stranger to idyllic love stories. He married his high school sweetheart, Toni, in 1974. They lived a happy life together for 43 years, with their two daughters, Angie and Jenny, and later, their two granddaughters, Charlee and Payton. Sadly, Toni suddenly fell ill and died in 2017. Six years after her passing, and with the support of his family, Turner is now ready to find love again.
This time around he’ll be handing out roses to similarly mature contestants and embarking on a romantic relationship that he hopes will lead to lasting love.
Gerry says of Toni, “I have a picture of her in my closet and every morning I give her the nod and ask her: ‘so what do you think about this?’” He goes on to add that they always talked about what would happen when one of them would go first. They were in complete agreement that they would want the surviving spouse to be happy. Gerry is now taking his shot at fulfilling that promise to Toni.
