Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner Signs With Gersh

EXCLUSIVE: Gersh on Tuesday announced its signing of Gerry Turner, the Indiana native who won hearts last fall as the first lead of ABC’s The Golden Bachelor.

A 72-year-old television personality and entrepreneur, Turner came to star on the network’s senior-focused spin-off of The Bachelor following the tragic loss of his wife, Toni, in 2017. He married his high school sweetheart at 22 and subsequently relocated to Davenport, IA, where he worked as the general manager for a corporation that owned five restaurants. Eventually acquiring the corporation, he assumed various roles within the food industry, including Director of Purchasing, Sales Trainer, and General Manager for several food distributors. Additionally, he wrote for various trade publications and served as a speaker for the distributors in later years.

After retiring in 2007, Turner returned to school to earn certification as a mediator, thereafter conducting mediations for small claims courts, divorces, civil rights and workplace conflict resolutions. He re-entered the dating scene last year with the support of his family and wound up juicing ratings for ABC, helping to bring new life to its flagship reality series of more than two decades.

After notching the largest multi-platform audience for any season premiere in the Bachelor franchise’s last three years, The Golden Bachelor went on to bring ABC its strongest 35-day audience average for any any unscripted show in the last five. The show also set a streaming record for ABC in its first 35 days on Hulu and is expected to launch further spin-offs — The Golden Bachelorette perhaps?

At the end of his season, Turner wound up engaged to Theresa Nist, a financial services professional out of New Jersey. The pair tied the knot in a live ABC special earlier this month.

Turner is one of several recent high-profile Alternative signings for Gersh, which this week announced Cineflix Productions as a new client. These come following the agency’s acquisition of A3’s Alternative and Digital departments earlier this month, as part of its ongoing plan for global expansion.