The Golden Bachelor’s Gerry Turner’s Love Story with Late Wife Toni: Everything to Know (Exclusive)

As the first Golden Bachelor, Gerry Turner searches for his second true love after the unexpected death of his wife Toni.

Gerry and Toni fell in love in high school – but when the future husband and wife met, he actually wanted to ask out her best friend.

But “I was absolutely not interested in a best friend,” Gerry, 72, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I remember standing there, talking to Toni and talking about her best friend. I suddenly thought, ‘Well, what the hell? This girl seems very nice and a good conversationalist.’”

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The Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner and his wife Toni.

ABC/ Instagram Golden Bachelor

Gerry got a date with Toni during his sophomore year and they went to a dance at the YMCA.

“At that time in Ottumwa, Iowa, where I lived, the big thing every Friday was the dance at the YMCA; there would be a band and so on,” he says. “So I asked Toni out dancing at the YMCA for the first time. We went out pretty much regularly for the next four or five years.”

They eventually married in 1972 and had two daughters, Jenny and Angie. Gerry passed his love of sports — he played baseball as a child and basketball in high school and college — to his daughters, coaching their softball teams and taking them skiing.

ABC/Brian Bowen Smith

He also remembers family boat trips on the Mississippi River.

“We had a lot of fun with it,” says the retired restaurateur. “We had a close group of friends who were sailors, we all had small children. We would just tie a line to their life jacket and tie a line to the boat and just throw them away. They had a great time.”

Jenny eventually had children of her own, Charlee and Payton, now 16 and 21, respectively. “It was huge, more so for her than for me,” Gerry says of Toni becoming a grandmother. “Suddenly she started shopping for baby clothes again and started thinking about how we could spend long weekends or longer periods babysitting the grandchildren and so on.”

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When Toni retired from her job as a volunteer coordinator at a regional hospital, she and Gerry planned to buy a lake house and spend their golden years there. But weeks after closing on the Indiana home, Toni fell ill with a bacterial infection and died.

“She worked her whole life, got to where she deserved her retirement time and her fun time, and she was cheated,” says Gerry. “That was the thing that always bothered me.”

ABC/Brian Bowen Smith

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Gerry had to put the pain behind him, telling PEOPLE, “The first lake house we bought together, I sold it as soon as another comparable lake house came along because I just couldn’t bear the memories of it being there — or, actually, to be there. I moved out of that house just to get away from those memories.”

Now Gerry continues to honor Toni in small ways throughout the year, but when the anniversary of her death comes around in July, Gerry and his daughters pause to talk about what Toni’s life would look like today.

“On the anniversary of her death, Jenny and Angie and I always exchange thoughts like ‘If she was here, she would be doing this today’ or ‘She would be interested in this,'” says Gerry.

Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner with (from left) granddaughter Payton Young, daughter Jenny Young, granddaughter Charlee Young and daughter Angie Warner.

ABC/Brian Bowen Smith

His family also honors Toni at Christmas by trying to recreate her favorite holiday treat.

“I know it sounds silly, but she was really good at making cinnamon balls for Christmas,” says Gerry. “She would spend hours. They were delicious. So everyone, both the girls and me now, decided that whatever we do on Christmas, we will make cinnamon balls. She loved Christmas; she loved to decorate and do all those things.”

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It took Gerry a few years to get back into a relationship, but now, with the support of his family, he hopes to find someone to spend the rest of his life with.

“Fate works in a strange way,” he says. “This is probably one of the strangest. But it worked.”

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The Golden Bachelor premieres Thursday at 8:00 PM ET on ABC.

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Source: HIS Education