For Sister Wives‘ Meri Brown, watching Kody Brown have kids with other wives as she struggled with fertility really felt like a knife to the kidneys. She shared her pain on the show’s Jan. 25 special.
Sister Wives star Meri Brown was painfully aware that former husband Kody Brown believed his love was meant to be multiplied.
So when she struggled to get pregnant after their 1990 vows, it certainly felt like a proverbial knife to the kidneys—particularly when his second and third wives Janelle Brown and Christine Brown announced they were expecting.
“There were definitely times in my life that I didn’t feel like anything that I could do was right,” the 55-year-old acknowledged on the TLC series’ One-on-One special Jan. 25. “Like, I couldn’t even have a baby.”
And after she welcomed her only child Leon in 1995—months after Christine gave birth to her eldest Aspyn and more than a year after Janelle welcomed Logan—Meri continued, “Then I couldn’t have anymore.”
So, as the family continued to grow (both Janelle and Christine had six kids, while Kody’s fourth wife Robyn Brown had five), Meri admitted she began to feel as if “something was wrong with me.”
As she worked through that trauma, “I don’t think that any of them thought I was wrong, necessarily, for having feelings and emotions,” she added of her then-sister wives. “But I don’t know how empathetic they were with it.”
Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesThey certainly tried, Robyn insisted.
“There was special circumstances,” Kody’s sole remaining wife shared with host Sukanya Krishnan. “Each of us would go and tell Meri when we were pregnant before we would tell anyone else, to help her be able to have the time to process that.”
The goal, noted Robyn was “to let her feel supported in that and say, you know, ‘I know this is hard for you and I am pregnant and I love you.'”
It’s also why Robyn offered to serve as a surrogate should Meri want more children with Kody. “I was trying to support that part of her,” she explained, “her pain and her story.”
Still, the heartache was all-consuming.
Noting it was “a huge challenge” to watch her spouse create a family with his other brides, Meri added, “It’s one thing to watch my sisters or friends or whatever have babies when I want them. It’s a whole other level to watch my husband have them with other people.”
And while that certainly topped her list of emotional struggles during her three-decade marriage to Kody, there were other less-than-pleasant moments.
“Kody and Janelle fail to recognize that possibly some of the issues that I had in polygamy could have stemmed from the fact that, oh, they wanted to get married on my birthday,” Meri revealed of the couple’s planned Jan. 16, 1993 wedding day.
Though Kody’s mom eventually intervened, pushing the nuptials back four days, initially, “They were like, ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ll just celebrate it a different day,'” Meri recalled. “Like, excuse me. It does matter”
And, yes, she had some feelings about Janelle making the transition from sister-in-law to sister wife following her two-year marriage to Meri’s brother Adam Barber.
“I had emotions,” Meri acknowledged, “and I was the one who is in trouble for having these emotions.”
Because, as a devout polygamist, “We’re supposed to endure to the end,” she explained. “And we’re supposed to live this way because this is what’s going to, you know, we’re going to gain salvation from it.”
Instead, Meri saved herself, announcing the end of her and Kody’s union in 2022. And now, she shared, “I’m done being walked all over by him. And I don’t think he knows what to do with that.”
Though he may want to buckle in as Meri continues to find her voice. Check out all the revelations she and her former sister wives have shared on the TLC series this season.
Meri Brown/InstagramMeri Brown and Janelle Brown Helped Pay for Robyn Brown’s House
Part of the reason the Coyote Pass sale got so hairy was that the family hadn’t taken care of what happened in Vegas.
When Meri sold her five-bedroom Sin City home, she handed over the profits so that Robyn could purchase her five-bedroom spread in Arizona, with Janelle chipping in as well.
From there, Meri detailed on the Jan. 18 One-on-One special, “They bought the house that was for them and then, you know, it doubled in value when they sold it. Yay, them.”
Which is when she and Janelle made clear that their loan wasn’t exactly on the house.
And so when it came time to sell their land in Arizona, “There was agreements that hadn’t been settled,” Kody detailed. “Janelle and Meri had gifted money to me and Robyn to purchase Robyn’s house. Meri’s house, the proceeds from her house in Las Vegas, were half mine, OK? And so they wanted their 25 percent of Coyote Pass, but I had put extra money in it. And they wanted to be paid back for their gift for Robyn’s house, but I hadn’t been compensated. And we couldn’t negotiate.”
They were able to strike a deal with Janelle, Robyn noted. “She said 100 percent we were square with her, but Meri hadn’t.”
Still, Kody insisted Meri’s payday was coming. “Meri will get paid,” he swore. “Everybody is going to have their money and I’m going to be bitter because they sat there and just s–t talked me the whole time.”
Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesRobyn Brown Insists Meri Brown “Burned So Many Bridges” in Their Relationship
The friction between once-close Robyn and Meri isn’t exactly water under the bridge. Asked why she felt she didn’t tell her former friend that Kody and Janelle were potentially planning a deal behind her back, Robyn told Sukanya on the Jan. 18 special, “I’m not going to sit there and be disloyal to Kody.”
Had she and Meri remained tight, “Then that could be something to say to me,” Robyn added, “but not now. She has burned so many bridges with me and I don’t know why.”
The issue, Robyn surmised, is Meri is “sitting there trashing me and I don’t even know what the problem is.” All of a sudden, she continued, there friendship was gone. “I don’t know what happened,” Robyn swore. “I don’t know why it’s different. She just all of a sudden was angry at Kody. So somehow I’m lumped into that.”
