Live televised ritual frees The Golden Bachelor from bonds of bachelorhood

Golden Bachelor Gerry Turner thanked both God and fate during his wedding vows tonight—but somehow forgot to namecheck the fine folks at Warner Horizon Unscripted Television, who, you could argue, did far more to get Turner to the altar this evening for “The Golden Wedding” than the Almighty ever managed. (Certainly, God has been pretty hands-off when it comes to providing mansions full of eligible senior women for other guys of Turner’s age who are looking to get married.) As broadcast by ABC, Turner married co-worker/fiancé Theresa Nist in an intimate ceremony on live TV this evening, joined only by a small group of close associates, multiple women who he’d previously dumped on national television, and the usual smattering of obligatory corporate cross-promotional invites. (The Bachelor season 28, starring Joey Graziadei! It’s coming! You can’t escape it!) Verily, the fairy tale has come true at last.

By all accounts—and with apologies to Kevin James and Will Smith—“The Golden Wedding” went off without a hitch, right down to both Turner and Nist reciting their vows with tears in their eyes, a lot of fun jokes about how one or both of them might very well be dead quite soon, and plenty of shots of runner-up Leslie Fhima Keeping It Together, Thanks, while a guy who’d told her he loved her on national TV just a handful of weeks ago told another woman she was his one and only.

But such is the way of things in Bachelor-Land, which took the W tonight on multiple levels. (Fun fact: If you consider The Golden Bachelor as part of the regular dude-focused Bachelor series—and exclude the slightly more successful The Bachelorette— this is only the second wedding it’s produced in 21 years of TV; one almost suspects this isn’t the ideal way for people to find true and lasting love!) We obviously don’t have ratings numbers yet for tonight’s event, but we’d be shocked if they didn’t turn out to be hefty; The Golden Bachelor was a ratings hit for ABC, with its series finale more than doubling the most recent Bachelorette finale. It’s enough to bring a tear to one’s eye.