The Bachelor alum Ashley Iaconetti has called Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist's reasoning for their divorce "B-S," adding how she felt "nothing" when she attended their wedding.
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Gerry, 72, and Theresa, 70, announced their divorce after only three months of marriage on Friday, April 12, and Gerry officially filed for divorce from the New Jersey native that same day in his home state of Indiana.
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Gerry and Theresa claimed in an interview with ABC Nightline -- a part of which aired hours earlier on Good Morning America -- that while they still love each other and broke up without fighting, neither one of them wants to relocate and move away from their family.
Ashley, however, admitted she doesn't "buy" The Golden Bachelor couple's explanation for their divorce.
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"I think a lot of the Good Morning America interview was B-S because you don't say, 'We're still in love with each other,' and then get divorced. You just don't," Ashley, 36, said via Instagram Stories on Friday, according to Us Weekly.
"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."
The Bachelor in Paradise alum, who is happily married to Jared Haibon, continued, "I don't buy [it]. I don't buy that the moving thing is the reason they got divorced three months in."
Gerry and Theresa got engaged on The Golden Bachelor finale, which aired in November 2023.
The pair quickly got married in a live televised special on January 4 on ABC, and they continued to make public appearances together and put on a united front -- including the red carpet at the Hulu on Disney+ celebration in Los Angeles on April 5.
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Gerry and Theresa also filmed an episode of Celebrity Family Feud with other The Bachelor, The Bachelorette and The Golden Bachelor alums earlier this month. Gerry even posted a photo on social media -- which featured Theresa and their adult children -- gushing about how his "blended family" played the game together.
But Ashley confessed that Gerry and Theresa's divorce didn't come as a huge shock to her.
"When I came back from The Golden Wedding, my friend [Naz Perez] wanted me on the 'I Don't Get It' podcast to talk about it and I said, 'No, I can't because I didn't feel anything,'" Ashley recalled after attending Gerry and Theresa's nuptials at La Quinta Resort and Club in Palm Springs, CA.
Bob Guiney, who previously starred on The Bachelor's fourth season, apparently has similar suspicions about Gerry and Theresa's abrupt and shocking split.
"Something must have been fundamentally flawed from the jump because you don't let someone spend a couple million bucks on your wedding and televise it for the world to see to then just allow it to crash and burn so quickly," Bob told Ashley and her guest co-host Trista Rehn on the April 12 episode of "The Ben & Ashley I: Almost Famous Podcast."
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Bob reasoned, "Maybe they don't live the life of a married couple -- like a hardcore married couple -- at this moment because they're already living separately. Maybe they just sort of take a few minutes and, I don't know, try to salvage this whole thing."
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Bob, for his part, left The Bachelor dating Estella Gardinier when his season aired in 2003. They broke up shortly after the show, and then Bob married Rebecca Budig in 2004.
Bob and Rebecca got divorced in 2010, and now he's happily married to Jessica Canyon.
"I don't care if you want the divorce or you don't want the divorce. It sucks no matter what," Bob explained on the podcast.
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"At the end of the day, it's like -- I'm sorry -- you don't make that step without exhausting everything that you can exhaust if you truly love that person. I can say as someone who went through a divorce."
The couple's bombshell divorce announcement comes about two weeks after reports they were still living separately had surfaced.
Gerry is still living at his lake house in Indiana, which is about 45 minutes away from his ageing father, Everett Turner.
Theresa, meanwhile, has a home in New Jersey near several of her grandsons, and she works a full-time job in financial services.
"If you're a couple that all you've ever known is living apart, which is them, then I have a hard time... accepting the fact that they weren't going to live together is why they're getting divorced," Bob said.
Just like Ashley and Bob, ABC Nightline co-anchor Juju Chang was openly skeptical of Gerry and Theresa's alleged cause of divorce.
"Throughout the process you said you were 100% committed to making it work," Juju said. "In November you told me you were thinking of moving to South Carolina to be together. How did it all fall apart?"
"Yeah, so that was the plan," Theresa replied.
"We looked at homes in South Carolina. We [also] considered New Jersey. We just looked at home after home but we never got to the point where we made that decision."
Sessions with a marriage counselor apparently helped Gerry and Theresa decide to move in the direction of divorce rather than trying to stay together and work things out.
However, the reality TV stars insisted they have not fallen out of love and that they'll continue to love each other -- as they begin date other people.
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"There's no doubt in my mind. I am still in love with her, I root for her every day," Gerry noted.
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During the ABC interview, Theresa also insisted a November 2023 media report that Gerry misrepresented his past throughout The Golden Bachelor's production and broadcast run and allegedly had a live-in girlfriend of nearly three years before he appeared on the show played no role in her decision to divorce.
"No, not for me," Theresa said. "Because Gerry had already discussed that with me, he had already explained that to me before the report was ever released -- so we were good with that, that didn't play into it."
"No," Gerry shrugged.
After the couple got engaged on The Golden Bachelor last year, Gerry and Theresa had told multiple media outlets that they planned to have a fresh start by moving to South Carolina together.
"For the last couple of years, when my family gets together, I've talked about moving to South Carolina, and it's an idea I've toyed with. And then in conversation with Theresa, a private moment, she's saying, 'Well, yeah, my son lives near Charleston in South Carolina,'" Gerry told People in December 2023.
"And all of a sudden, it's like, there's a big problem that is gone. The issue of compromising on where to live and how to reconcile families and all of that is, it's no longer an issue."
Theresa had gushed at the time about how she wanted to build a big home with Gerry so their children and grandchildren could visit and have plenty of room to stay.
Afterward, Gerry drove 10 hours from Indiana with his dog to visit Theresa in New Jersey on January 9.
Gerry -- an Iowa native who has been living in Indiana since 2017 -- and Theresa tried new restaurants together, and they even recreated their first The Golden Bachelor date with a trip to a local diner.
Gerry and Theresa were asked if they were still planning to move to Charleston together during a January 16 appearance on the "Bachelor Happy Hour" podcast, which is co-hosted by Bachelor in Paradise spouses Joe Amabile and Serena Pitt.
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Theresa shared at the time, "We're still going to look there, yeah, absolutely... We're going to consider New Jersey, but it's probably going to be outside of Charleston. So that's the plan!"
"The plan is that we're going to plan. We're going to sit down and plan, and all of a sudden, my wheels started spinning about our trip to Italy."
Theresa had said she and Gerry were thinking about going to Italy, a trip ABC had gifted them, in May or June of this year.
When the Los Angeles Times previously asked Gerry if he'd continue to seek stardom or just live a quiet life with Theresa post-show, Gerry had replied, "I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive."
"I can have a great, quiet life with Theresa and still look at the aspirations and ambitions that may be out there," he elaborated in December.
"But I will say this, I am absolutely going to savor every moment until I get to that altar and say my 'I do's.' I want every single moment to be as joyful for her as it is for me, and I never want to look back and feel I hurried through anything. We'll deal with the aspirations after that."
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This marked the second marriage for both Gerry and Theresa, who had each married their high school sweethearts.
Gerry and his late wife, Toni Turner, were married for 43 years before she suddenly passed away in 2017 from complications due to a bacterial infection.
Theresa was married for 42 years to her late husband, Billy Nist, who died in 2014. Gerry and Theresa each have two adult children and multiple grandchildren.
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