Gerry Turner recently reminisced about the moment he found out that his late wife, Toni, “didn’t want anybody” to be aware of her health diagnosis.
The 74-year-old television personality published his new book, Golden Years: What I’ve Learned from Love, Loss, on November 4, 2025.
In the book, Gerry revealed that his wife Toni succumbed to a bacterial infection in 2017 and after his death, he “started to go through” her things that summer and “found evidence that she had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.”
He wrote, “Tucked away in the back of a bathroom drawer, in a clear sign that she didn’t want anybody to uncover what was in there, I found evidence that she had been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.”
“There was literature, prescriptions, a blood glucose meter, and other supplies — all apparently untouched and unused. She’d never mentioned this big diagnosis to me or her daughters, and, as far as I could tell, she’d never followed through with treatment,” The Golden Bachelor star detailed.
Notably, the discovery gave birth to countless questions in his mind and was left reeling with “what-ifs.”
“Untreated or unmanaged diabetes stresses the body, particularly the kidneys. Had Toni had the means to live longer, but been undone in the end by the belief that any kind of whining was frivolous? Had I somehow contributed to this mentality? Why hadn’t she felt comfortable confiding in me about something as important as having diabetes? The loss of any loved one is sad. But to think it might have been possible, no matter how remotely, for her to have lived longer or still be alive today, is even more painful,” he explained.
Gerry confessed that the “saddest” part about Toni’s passing is that she “didn’t feel safe enough to tell anyone the truth of what was happening with her.”
