“The Golden Bachelor”'s Gerry Turner's Love Story with Late Wife Toni: Everything to Know (Exclusive)

The ABC star tells PEOPLE Toni seemed "really nice" and like "a good conversationalist" when he first met her in high school

As the first-ever Golden Bachelor, Gerry Turner is looking for his second true love following the unexpected death of his wife Toni.

Gerry and Toni became sweethearts in high school — but when the future husband and wife met, he actually wanted to ask out her best friend.

But “the best friend had absolutely no interest in me,” Gerry, 72, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I remember standing there, chatting with Toni, and talking about her best friend. All of a sudden, I thought, ‘Well, what the heck? This gal seems really nice and a good conversationalist.’”

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Gerry landed a date with Toni during his sophomore year and they went to a dance at the YMCA.

"Back then in Ottumwa, Iowa, which is where I lived, the big deal every Friday was a dance at the YMCA; there'd be a band and so forth,” he says. “So I asked Toni out the first time to a dance at the YMCA. We pretty much dated regularly for the next four or five years.”

They eventually tied the knot in 1972 and went on to welcome two daughters, Jenny and Angie. Gerry pass his love of sports — he played baseball as a kid and basketball in high school and college — to his daughters, coaching their softball teams and taking them skiing.

He also remembers family boat trips on the Mississippi River.

“We had a lot of fun with that,” the retired restaurateur says. “We had a close group of friends who were boaters, all of us had young kids. We'd just tie a line onto their life jacket and tie a line onto the boat and just throw them over. They had a great time.”

Jenny eventually had kids of their own, Charlee and Payton, now 16 and 21, respectively. “That was huge, more so for her than for me,” Gerry says of Toni becoming a grandma. “Al of a sudden she was starting to buy baby clothes again, and starting to figure out how we could be spending long weekends or extended periods of time being babysitters for the grandkids and so forth.”

Related: Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner Reveals What His Granddaughters and Kids Thought of His Casting

When Toni retired from her job as a volunteer coordinator at a regional hospital, she and Gerry planned to buy a lake house and spend their golden years there. But weeks after closing on the home in Indiana, Toni got sick with a bacterial infection and died.

“She'd worked her whole life, getting to that spot where she deserved her time in retirement and her time of fun, and she got cheated out of it,” says Gerry. “That was the thing that always bothered me.”

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Gerry had to put the pain behind him, telling PEOPLE: “The first lake house that we bought together, I sold that house as soon as another house came available on the lake that was comparable because I just couldn't stand the memories of her being there — or, actually, not being there. I moved out of that house just to get away from those memories.”

Now Gerry continues to honor Toni in small ways throughout the year, but when the July anniversary of her death comes around, Gerry and his daughters take pause to talk about what Toni’s life would look like today.

“On the anniversary of her passing, Jenny and Angie and I always exchange thoughts like, ‘If she was here, this would be what she would be doing today,’ or ‘This is what she would be interested in,’” Gerry says.

His family also pays tribute to Toni on Christmas by attempting to recreate her favorite holiday treat.

“I know it sounds silly, but she was really good at making cinnamon balls at Christmas,” Gerry says. “She'd spend hours. They were delicious. So all of us, both girls and myself now, have decided that whatever we do on Christmas, we're going to make cinnamon balls. She loved Christmas; she loved decorating and doing all that stuff.”

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It took Gerry a few years to get back in the dating game but now, with his family’s support, he hopes to find someone to spend the rest of his life with.

“Fate works in strange ways,” he says. “This is probably one of the strangest. But it's worked out.”

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The Golden Bachelor premieres Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on ABC.

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