From the bachelor villa to the spacious southern dream home! After the engagement on Thursday The Golden Bachelor finale, Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist tell PEOPLE they plan to start living together in Charleston, South Carolina.
“One of the things I think fate played a hand in was the possibility of where we would end up living,” says Gerry. “For the last few years, when my family gets together, I’ve talked about moving to South Carolina, and that’s an idea I’ve been toying with. And then in a conversation with Theresa, in a private moment, she says, ‘Well, yes, my son lives near Charleston, South Carolina.'”
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Gerry currently lives in Indiana and Theresa comes from New Jersey, but that conversation made it easier for the couple to decide where to live.
Jim Wright
“And all of a sudden it’s like there’s a big problem that’s gone,” says Gerry. “The question of compromise about where to live and how to reconcile families and all that is no longer a problem.”
Reality stars hope their families will visit them often. “We want to have a house that’s so inviting that everyone wants to come,” says Theresa, 70. “Maybe a pool so everyone wants to come and have fun.”
Fortunately for Gerry and Theresa, their children have already grown close.
“Our daughters are like sisters now,” says the father of two.
Theresa agrees. “My daughter says, ‘Thank you for giving me two more sisters,'” says the financial services professional. “She already has a sister-in-law, but now two more sisters.”
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Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist in the finale of ‘The Golden Bachelor’.
John Fleenor/disney
After a hometown meeting with Theresa’s family, Gerry came to see her family as his own.
“I looked at Jen and it was like, ‘This could be my own daughter,'” Gerry says of his fiancée’s daughter. “I literally had those thoughts because she was so kind and sensitive to the situation, to her mom and to me. The whole dynamic just worked.”
Theresa and Gerry plan to bring their families together for a Hanukkah celebration this month. “We’ll have a holiday dinner with everyone,” says Gerry. As they continued to get to know each other through phone calls and text messages over the past few months, Gerry and Theresa learned that they shared similar views on a very important—albeit unromantic—aspect of their lives coming together.
“Financially, we’re the same,” says Gerry. “The way we handle money is the same.”
Theresa clarifies that this means the couple consider themselves “somewhat frugal.”
Although Gerry and Theresa are looking forward to moving in together, they don’t have an exact plan for when that will happen.
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“We’ve had conversations and we’ve narrowed it down to a time frame, but it’s always a work in progress,” says the retired restaurateur. “We have two houses for sale. We have other events to deal with and so on.” One big event: their live, televised wedding on ABC in January.
“When you’re in your 20s and you put something off for a year, it’s a very small percentage of your life,” says Gerry. “In your 70s, the clock ticks faster. And I am 100% sure that I have found the right girl for me. So it’s like, why not?”
Gerry can’t wait for his future to unfold, but Theresa keeps him grounded.
“Luckily, Theresa is the more patient, I think, of the two of us,” he says. “I, I say, ‘Come on, let’s go, it’s time to go have fun. Life is a waste. Let’s go.’” Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.Golden wedding will air on January 4th at 8:00 PM ET on ABC.
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Source: HIS Education