Gerry Turner is all about family, but he doesn’t regret ignoring some early advice from his daughters. The 72-year-old star of The Golden Bachelor appears on Friday’s episode of The Jennifer Hudson Show where the father of two shares that he ignored his daughters’ advice.
“The advice I got I totally screwed up. They told me, ‘Dad, just don’t kiss anyone the first night,'” Gerry says, laughing.
Of course, Gerry locked lips with several women his first night on the show.
“I didn’t mind it at all. I liked it,” Gerry quips off his romantic smooches.
The widower is proud of the impact the show has made thus far. He shared that a former friend, who also lost his wife around the same time as Gerry, DM’d him to tell him some touching news.
“He said, ‘Gerry, all these years I have not dated anyone and I’ve watched you on the first two episodes of the show and I’m inspired with your emoting hope and a little bit of luck, I’m now dating someone,'” Gerry says, sharing that when he and his daughter read the message they were in tears.
“That’s what this is for. You want to give people the confidence to not just hope but to find heart and to find humor and enjoy their lives and find that person,” Gerry says.
Gerry previously opened up to ET, sharing that he gets into “an incredibly bad situation” by falling for two women over the course of his journey.
“When you’re down to the last two people over that amount of time and that much investment, you really have strong feelings for them even though you know they’re not the right person. They are so close to it,” he said. “You’re connected so deeply and then you realize they have to leave. It’s, oh my god, it was an incredibly bad situation.”
The Golden Bachelor airs Thursdays on ABC. Follow along Gerry Turner’s journey for love with ET’s coverage of the show.
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