Heavy/ABC Theresa Nist and Gerry Turner have split.
A Bachelor Nation star thinks there’s more to “The Golden Bachelor” breakup.
Speaking on her Instagram story and her podcast, franchise star Ashley Iaconetti said she’s not buying the story that distance was the cause for Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist’s split.
On April 12, 2024, “The Golden Bachelor” couple announced they are divorcing after just three months of marriage. During an appearance on “Good Morning America” with Nist by his side, Turner, 72, professed that he still loves his short-term bride. “I still love this person, there’s no doubt in my mind. I root for her every day,” he said.
But Iaconetti said she never felt the love—even at the couple’s wedding.
Here’s what you need to know:
Ashley Iaconetti Questioned the Reason for the Split
Iaconetti knows a thing or two about Bachelor Nation romances. She met her husband, Jared Haibon, on ‘Bachelor in Paradise” and they are currently expecting their second child.
But in a rambling Instagram story, she admitted she never bought Turner and Nist’s accelerated love story. Iaconetti, who was a guest at the couple’s televised wedding at La Quinta Resort and Club in Palm Springs, California on January 4, revealed that her friend Naz Perez asked her to talk about ‘The Golden Wedding” on his podcast and she declined the invite. “I said, ‘No, I can’t because I didn’t feel anything,’” Iaconetti recalled.
She then dug into the “Good Morning America” exclusive. “I think a lot of the ‘Good Morning America’ interview was BS because you don’t say, ‘We’re still in love with each other,’ and then get divorced. You just don’t,” Iaconetti said. She then questioned the couple’s hesitation to live together during their 3-month marriage.
“If it’s a distance thing — at their age especially — live in Indiana, live in New Jersey, visit each other once or twice a month … Be in love, be married but, like, you know, commute to each other,” she said. “I don’t buy [it]. I don’t buy that the moving thing is the reason they got divorced three months in.”
Ashley Iaconetti Said Turner & Nist Didn’t Have to Get Married So Fast
ABCGerry Turner and Theresa Nist at their wedding.
Turner and Nist’s courtship and wedding went faster than any other Bachelor Nation wedding in the past. Turner explained the quickie wedding to his 70-year-old bride on ‘The Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast. “We’re old! We didn’t want to put off what we really felt was right,” he said in December.
But on the April 12 episode of the “Ben and Ashley Almost Famous” podcast, Iaconetti said her initial reaction to it all was, “Wow, I can’t believe this happened so fast.”
She added, “I definitely thought it was weird they were getting married so soon. I’ve been very vocal about that. I was like, four months, why would you ever get married after four months of knowing each other? It’s not even a four-month engagement. It was four months of knowing each other. And most of those months they weren’t even actually in the same room.”
Iaconetti reasoned that the septuagenarian couple maybe just wanted “companionship.”
“I just don’t know that I buy the whole like location is the reason we’re divorcing after three months,” she added. “That just feels really extreme, and I really think that there’s a way to get around it, especially as retired people. I know like, travel is expensive, but you’re telling me that, like you’re supposedly still in love, aka the ‘Good Morning America’ interview, but like after three months you realize that you just can’t dedicate your time to traveling for each other? I don’t know, I don’t buy it. … There’s something weird about this.”
Ashley Iaconetti Thinks Revelations About Gerry Turner’s Past May Have Played a Part in the Split
GettyAshley Iaconetti.
Iaconetti was also put off by the couple holding hands during the GMA interview.
‘[With] the ‘Good Morning America’ interview I’m just like, ‘This is total BS.’ Because I just felt like there was something phony about it, the way that they were even like holding hands and being so cuddly and stuff. The interviewer is like, ‘You guys are holding hands, like you still…’ and they’re like, ‘Yeah, we still love each other so much, like we’re still in love.’ And I’m like, you’re still in love?”
“I can understand you saying like you have love for each other support there, but you’re telling me that you’re in love and then the only reason here is distance?” Iaconetti asked.
Iaconetti also said she thinks the relationship had “fundamental flaws” that weren’t realized because the two barely spent any time together before tying the knot. She also questioned the impact of a bombshell expose about Turner’s past published by the Hollywood Reporter just one month before the wedding. The report alleged that he misrepresented his career and his dating history following the death of his wife Toni.
“[During] the ‘Good Morning America’ interview, [Nist] said that that article was no big deal to her,” Iaconetti noted. “She said that they had already talked everything that was in the article out before the article even came out. So I think that means that there is some validity to what was in the article. But I can’t I can’t get rid of that feeling that it did have something to do with it.”
Iaconetti did say she wants nothing but happiness for any couple. She pointed out that both Turner and Nist seemed good and at peace with their decision to split.
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