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Good news, ladies: It looks like The Golden Bachelor star Gerry Turner, 72, has a good sense of humor.
In the first teaser trailer for the series coming to ABC in September, Turner reveals what he’s looking for in a date.
“Best case scenario is I find out that Helen Mirren is on the market, and she’s really happy to be on The Golden Bachelor,” joked Turner, who pronounces his first name like “Gary.” (Fun fact: Helen Mirren appeared on the December/January cover of AARP The Magazine.)
Turner, who likes four-wheeling and pickleball, is starring as the show’s first senior Bachelor.
“I hope at the end of it, I find the person that I’ll spend the rest of my life with that will complete my family. I want to fall in love,” Turner said. “The person who can lay down beside you at night and not have to say anything, and you feel it — that’s love. That’s what I want, and I know that person’s out there.”
And this wouldn’t be his first time finding that love. The Indiana native shared in the preview that he married his high school sweetheart, and they spent 43 years together before she died on July 15, 2017, just over a month after retiring and closing on their dream house.
In the tearjerker trailer, Turner shared that the love of his two daughters and granddaughters got him through the rough patches following the loss of his wife, but admits that even six years after her death, “No one’s ever going to replace Toni.”
“What I look for at the age of 70 is different than what I looked for when I was in high school and college,” Turner told The Bachelorette host Jesse Palmer in front of a live studio audience during Monday’s “Men Tell All” recap show. “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 that I had with Toni. I don’t think it would be right to do it that way.”
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