The debut season of “The Golden Bachelor,” ABC’s dating show featuring contestants 60 and older, concluded on Thursday night with an episode in which its lead, Gerry Turner, a 72-year-old retiree and pickleball enthusiast from Indiana, proposed to Theresa Nist, 70, a financial services professional from Shrewsbury, N.J.
“For the first time since 1968, I know that I’ve fallen in love again,” Mr. Turner said over a montage of the pair earlier in the season.
The show, which had been in the works for about a decade, gave airtime to the romantic lives of a demographic that has largely gone ignored by reality TV. As Mr. Turner and Ms. Nist snuggled on a Ferris wheel and rode through a river on horseback — scenes typical of the “Bachelor” franchise — they also met each other’s grandchildren and discussed the challenges of dating after the death of a spouse. Mr. Turner’s wife, Toni, died in 2017, and Ms. Nist’s husband, Billy, died in 2014.
The 22 women Mr. Turner dated on the show ranged in age from 60 to 75 and included widows, divorcées, grandmothers and one pickleball team captain. Before proposing to Ms. Nist, Mr. Turner broke up with Leslie Fhima, 64, a fitness instructor from Minneapolis. “You’re both wonderful, but only one of you is right,” Mr. Turner told Ms. Fhima, who had been considered one of the season’s front-runners.
Ms. Fhima said she was “blindsided” by Mr. Turner’s decision. “You made it sound like you chose me,” she said through tears, later in the conversation. “You led me down a path, and then you took a turn and left me there.”
The spinoff has renewed interest in a flagging franchise. The eight episodes before the finale drew an average of 5.7 million viewers per episode, according to Nielsen — a stronger per-episode showing than any full season of the franchise since 2021.
In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Turner said he had applied for the show not only to find a partner, but to show viewers that “people my age still have hope, and they still have vigorous lives.”
ABC has not announced whether “The Golden Bachelor” will return for a second season.
