Anyone else watching The Golden Bachelor? I've been enjoying this season a great deal. I enjoy the regular shows as well, but the GB is more my age range, and therefore more interesting for me. The woman who came in third is named Faith Martin. She is a 60 year old from rural Benton City, Washington. She's a former high school teacher who also has worked as a singer and radio DJ. She likes to ride her horse, hike, and backpack among other interests.

"Faith Martin, 60, was once a homeless Mormon teen who, at 19, married a guy nicknamed Big Papa and Sasquatch eight days after their first kiss. After 21 years, they divorced — he got the Harleys; she got the horse and trailer — and he died in a fall in 2022." Faith mentioned on the show that she likes to ride her horse to the local coffee shop in the morning. Nothing about her on the show flagged as Mormon, and she frequently wore sleeveless clothing. So perhaps she is inactive or exmo. She said, "I’m just not a very narrow-minded person that’s traditional. I’m very open to so many things."

Faith was popular with the fans. She suspects, as did I, that the difference between her lifestyle and that of the lead was probably a deal-breaker.

https://www.aarp.org/entertainment/television/info-2023/the-golden-bachelor-castoff-faith-martin.html

I've watched a little of it. It's kind of cringy in several ways for me.

I thought she (Faith) was probably the one he would pick based on their early meetings. He seems a little too prudish for her, IMO. I'm guessing Mormon stuff is simply a thing from her past. She doesn't give off Mormon vibes in any way. OTOH, if she mentioned Mormon stuff too much to him, that could have been a turn off for him too.

Yes, she was the frontrunner at first. I'm not sure that Gerry is all that prudish. One of the final two women (Leslie) is not prudish at all, and he seems okay with that.

He's not quite my cup of tea, but he seems like a very nice, decent man who would appeal to a lot of women. Of his final two, Leslie is Jewish and Theresa is Catholic (like him,) so I've wondered if that would play into his reasoning.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/20/2023 12:03AM by summer.

Any predictions?

If he ends up with Leslie, they must be willing to share traditions. Apparently he is Christian and she is Jewish. She is the younger one and very physically active in sporty things which I think would appeal to him (he likes pickleball).

If he ends up with Theresa, she doesn't seem thrilled about quitting her job. She appears to be very happy and proud of her job accomplishments. I think her marriage history is more similar to his.

I have no guess. I thought it would be Faith. Shrug. He seems like a nice enough person.

I think it's going to be Theresa because they have more in common overall. She's 70, so I don't think that giving up her job will be a big deal. She said on the show that she would be willing to do that.

I agree that much of Leslie's appeal for him is her very fit, active nature.

Uh oh. There's a scorned woman in his past!

The fans of the show were already familiar with most of his work history (the show tends to buff up resumes for many leads and cast members.) There is also a truism that the lead and his choice don't really get to know each other in depth until after the show ends. In Gerry's case, filming only lasted about three weeks total.

If the stories are true, then there is a bit of tarnish on his knight's armor.

During the late 1980s, there was a commercial shortwave station that came on the air from Salt Lake city with the callsign KUSW. I used to listen to it regularly with my own shortwave radio--especially "The Top 12 at 12", a daily feature that counted down the top 12 songs on the national record charts for that week during a given year. Former KCPX disc jockey Skinny Johnny Mitchell hosted the show.

Outside of the specialty show, KUSW's format was what we now call classic rock, and Faith martin was one of the hosts. She seemed pretty hip and I thought she was an eligible bachelorette; that was until the Easter Seals telethon of (if memory serves) 1987 when KUSW carried the entire telethon live over the air. The telethon's host was Tony Orlando, and during a break in his hosting duties, he came back to talk with the KUSW crew who were (apparently) live in person at the show's main hub in Hollywood. It was while Tony Orlando was there that I learned that Faith Martin was married and had small children (she didn't say how many).

For those who may be interested, KUSW didn't last very long. It was sold to Pat Robertson's TBN cable channel, and the FCC reassigned the new callsign KTBN to it. The only host kept over from the rock days was Skinny Johnny Mitchell (he converted to fundamentalist Christianity around that time). That incarnation of the station lasted for, I think, a decade or so, but with the rise in Internet radio and the plummetting of shortwave audiences, KTBN closed its doors as a radio station in the mid-2000s, and it hasn't been heard from since.

It's a small world.