ABC Joan Vassos and Gerry Turner.
“Golden Bachelorette” Joan Vassos says she’s been texting with “Golden Bachelor” Gerry Turner “all the time,” according to a June 22 interview in People Magazine.
As fans of the “Golden Bachelor” know, Vassos, 61, and Turner, 72, seemed to hit it off. Vassos then cut their journey short when she left the show abruptly to help her daughter, who had recently given birth.
Now that she’s been cast as the first “Golden Bachelorette,” some fans are wondering whether Turner will make a surprise appearance on the show and reignite the pair’s romance. Turner married his top choice, Theresa Nist, and then filed for divorce a short time later. However, Vassos told People of Turner, “He’s a very, very good friend.”
‘Golden Bachelorette’ Joan Vassos Praised Gerry Turner in the Interview
Heavy/ABCFans wonder if Gerry Turner would be on Joan Vassos’ season.
Vassos had only positive things to say about Turner in the People Magazine interview.
“He did this so well. He kind of created the road map that we have now. There’s no rulebook, and he kind of wrote it a little bit,” she told People of Turner.
She told the magazine that Turner has given her advice.
“He exemplified somebody who is very open and vulnerable. He said that’s what you need to be from day one, because you don’t have a lot of time,” Vassos said of Turner, in the interview with People. “This is a quick journey. You can’t leave anything on the table. I feel like day one, starting conversation one, everything you do here is important.”
Joan Vassos Says She Wants to Find Love After Losing Her Husband, John Vassos, to Cancer
ABCJoan Vassos.
In the interview, Vassos shared that she is sincere about trying to find love. “I really want love,” Vassos said, adding, “I want to have somebody in my life. I feel like life is better when you share it with somebody. I truly believe all of that.”
“As far as my heart being completely open, I think it’s nine-tenths of the way there,” she told People.
Vassos is a widow. She posted an emotional tribute to her late husband on her Instagram page in January 2024.
“Some days it seems like it just happened and I can’t catch my breath, still feeling the shock of it,” she wrote. “Other days it feels like he’s been gone a lifetime, those days are worse because I’m afraid the memories are fading. I think that’s what scares me the most.”
According to Vassos, “I always knew that the hole he left in the universe when he passed away could never be filled, but I didn’t realize that maybe people might just stop noticing it was there. For years I’ve tried to think of how to memorialize him, but nothing seems quite right.”
She continued, “Plant a tree, put his name on the back of a bench . . . nope, I’d have to name the tallest building in the world to do him justice. Every floor would stand for something kind he did for someone, the good deeds are too many to even attempt to mention.”
According to her husband’s obituary, John Vassos died at age 59 in 2021. The cause of death was cancer, the obituary says.