Amid rumors that Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist split over distance and where they should permanently settle, the Golden Bachelor is now revealing the truth.

The 72-year-old married the 71-year-old winner of his season in January 2024, and in March, Gerry was diagnosed with cancer. They split just a few weeks later.

“There’s a topic that I haven’t wanted to talk about until now. I think it’s time, also because it probably will clear up a lot of mystery around what happened back in February, March and April,” he shared with People.

“As Theresa and I were trying very hard to find our lifestyle and where we were going to live and how we were going to make our life work, I was unfortunately diagnosed with cancer.”

Some unusual blood work resulted in him finding out he has a bone marrow cancer called Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia.

He shared, “Unfortunately, there’s no cure for it. So that weighs heavily in every decision I make,” he says of the diagnosis.

The cancer diagnosis made him re-evaluate where he wanted to spend his time, which was with his family, and Theresa wasn’t a priority.

“The importance of finding the way with Theresa was still there, but it became less of a priority,” he said.

“When you are hit with that kind of news and the shock wears off after a few days or a few weeks and you regroup and you realize what’s important to you, that’s where you start to move forward,” he continues. “And I hope that people understand in retrospect now that that had a huge bearing on my decisions and I think probably Theresa’s as well.”

“Hopefully they’ll look at things a little bit differently, that maybe it wasn’t quite a rash, fast decision that people thought. That there was something else going on,” he adds of fans.

Theresa is now publicly reacting to this cancer news.

“That’s devastating news, really. I was extremely upset,” she said of when she found out.

However, for her part, his diagnosis wasn’t a factor in the split.

She said it “wasn’t a factor in the ending of the relationship, at least not for me. If that was something on his part, maybe, I don’t know. But no, that didn’t factor into ending the relationship. Part of it was the distance, but that wasn’t the only part. That’s really all I will say.”