Gerry Turner defends Mel Owens over his  controversial ‘Golden Bachelor’ age limit

Bachelors stick up for each other. 

Gerry Turner, the first “Golden Bachelor,” is weighing in on his Season 2 successor Mel Owens’  controversial comments.

“Well, I don’t really know what to think about it,” Turner exclusively told The Post. 

“I feel like he’s done a great job of reestablishing what his true opinion is. I think perhaps that his comments could have been taken a bit out of context.”

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Owens, 66, faced backlash before his season premiered for saying he wouldn’t date women over 60. 

“If they’re 60 or over, I’m cutting them. This is not ‘The Silver Bachelor,’ this is ‘The Golden Bachelor,’” the Season 2 star said in June. 

Owens, who played for the Los Angeles Rams from 1981 to 1989, requested that the women had “to be fit, because I’m staying in shape and work out and stuff. And I told them [to] try and stay away from artificial hips and the wigs.”

His comments quickly got blasted. 

“He doesn’t seem like the type for ‘in sickness and in health’” one fan said on X, formerly Twitter, while another noted: “Awful. I won’t watch with a jerk in the lead.”

Another person remarked, “Sounds like a real winner. Shocking ABC doesn’t care that they’re going to make women fight over a shallow sexist jerk.” 

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Owens later told Fox News Digital, “I apologized when I met the women on the first night,” and added, “there’s no age to love.”

He explained that his earlier remarks were “unfair and I apologized and went forward and asked them to let me earn it back and, hopefully, I did on the season.”

Turner, who starred on “The Golden Bachelor” Season 1, told The Post, “Maybe he was judged a bit too harshly about what he had to say. I think his actions on the show are a far more important indicator of who he is as a person.” 

However, Turner told The Post that “because of recent travel,” he hasn’t had time to watch more than “the first episode” of “The Golden Bachelor” Season 2. 

“I have the other episodes recorded, but I haven’t been home to watch them. It is on my to do list this week with Lana and I, to catch up on that show,” he said, referring to his current fiancee, Lana Sutton. 

Turner met Sutton following his split from his “Golden Bachelor” choice, Theresa Nist, 72. 

After marrying on the show, the former couple divorced following a mere three months of marriage. 

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Turner said he could sympathize with Owens weathering the court of public opinion. 

“There were times when it was very difficult. Not only some of the comments directed at me, but also those comments out there that I knew my daughters and granddaughters saw.” 

“The general public sometimes can be very cruel in their comments and only know a small portion of the story….and give the most negative aspects of the story the most life,” the Indiana-based reality TV star noted. “But that’s just kind of the way things are. I think anyone who has some public appearance or public stature has to kind of expect that, to a certain extent.”