Shock Revelation: Kody Brown gets married – wasted love again?
KODY BROWN FROM SISTER WIVES HAS A NEW WIFE CONFIRMED?! – Wasted Love Shocker!
Sister Wives‘ Kody Brown Floats the Idea of a Woman “Joining the Family” in New Season 20 Trailer
In the trailer for Sister Wives‘ 20th season, Kody Brown talks to wife Robyn Brown about another woman “joining the family” and offers an apology to exes Meri Brown, Janelle Brown and Christine Brown.
Perhaps Sister Wives star Kody Brown feels his love still needs to be multiplied, and his time divided.
Because despite insisting during the June 15 conclusion of the TLC show’s season 19 tell-all that he “would never try plural marriage again,” he seemed more open to the idea in the first trailer for the series’ 20th season, premiering Sept. 28.
“I got another one of those emails from some woman,” he detailed to his sole remaining wife Robyn Brown, “asking sort of, like, to get to know us for the purpose of joining the family.”
And while viewers don’t see the mom of five’s take on the thought of more wives joining the fold, she spent much of the previous season lamenting the end of her husband’s unions to Meri Brown, Janelle Brown and Christine Brown.
“I had a different plan for my life,” she shared during the June tell-all. “I was going to live a plural marriage. I was going to be a part of a big picture, a big family. That’s been taken away from me.”
Still, she hasn’t lost sight of what remains.
“I always choose Kody,” stressed Robyn, who wed the father of 18 in 2010 following her divorce from first husband David Jessop. “However it is, it’s with Kody.”
TLCAnd though Kody was fairly clear about how it will be—”Hell no,” he responded when asked about the possiblity of marrying again. “And I’ll tell you why: Because we already failed”—it wouldn’t be the first time he switched up his stance.
Gathering his former brides together in the trailer, he told them, “I wanted to apologize with all my heart.” And in a separate scene he admitted to Janelle, “I said I didn’t love you. That wasn’t true.”
As for any love left in his exes’ hearts, Christine told husband of nearly two years David Woolley, “I don’t want to talk to Kody every again,” while Janelle—who revealed to Meri she’s considering going through a spiritual divorce years after announcing her split from Kody in 2022—admitted to daughter Madison Brush, “I really want to tell him that we’ll never be friends.”
Meri, meanwhile, in the immortal words of one Taylor Swift, emphasized to Kody, “We are never, ever, ever getting back together.”
And the claws seemed all but destined to come out as the entire group gathered for what Janelle called “a standoff” at Coyote Pass, the 14-acre property in Arizona the family sold for $1.5 million in April.
“This is bulls–t,” Robyn declared in one confessional. “I’m not selling this land until everything is perfectly fair and we do this the right way. Sorry.”
Though she did seem regretful about everything that transpired to bring their brood to their emotional mountainside showdown.
“There’s been more effort put into creating pain and hurting each other,” Robyn said. “Makes me angry.”
Which just might be good news for Kody, who lamented in his own confessional, “Listen, I have this wife. Her name is Robyn. And she would never let me do anything naughty as bad as I want to do it.” Cue: His take on a evildoer laugh.
Need a refresher on how Kody entered his villain era, we’ve got your cheat sheet on everything that went down last season. Study up before Sister Wives returns on Sunday, Sept. 28 at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.
Ida Mae Astute/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty ImagesMeri Brown Says Kody Brown Gave Her Hope for Their Marriage
Kody Brown insisted he was ready to divide himself from first wife Meri Brown shortly after their 1990 vows. But “he led me to believe that he would work on things by saying, ‘Oh Meri, when we move to Flagstaff, this will be a good time to have a new beginning for us,'” Meri shared in the Sept. 15 premiere, referencing their 2018 move. “Like he led me to believe those things. This is what he’s done for many, many years.”
Her main gripe, she shared, is “his lack of communication and how he really felt and what he really wanted or what he really didn’t want and the story that he’s been telling for all these years.”
And while Kody acknowledged that there may have been “mixed messages,” it was only because as he started to work on things, “I’m like, ‘Why would I do this?'” he explained. “I would not court and date her now.”
Either way, Meri’s friends were thrilled when she finally pulled the plug in early 2023.
“They’re like, ‘OK, we’re here for you, we’re supporting you. And it’s about damn time,'” she confessed. Blinders off, she now feels that he had been trying to get her to walk away for years by insisting he didn’t love her, “Because if he can push me out and I leave, he’s not the bad guy because he didn’t walk away.”
TLCKody Brown Wanted to Sell Coyote Pass
Years after the family purchased the 14-acre plot of land they planned to build on in Flagstaff, Ariz., Kody confessed in the season premiere that he was ready to let the dream wither. Unable to build without paying off the full $820,000 price tag (which the family reportedly did in 2023), he told remaining wife Robyn Brown, “I’d almost rather scrap it or sell it and then just start again somewhere else.”
As for Robyn, “I can’t talk about that,” she responded. “That is so not where I’m at.”
Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/FilmMagicJanelle Brown Left Kody Brown for This Reason
While second wife Janelle Brown previously told E! News, “We just kind of started to grow apart,” ultimately it was Kody’s lapses as a parent to some of their kids that pushed her to leave.
“The big spark for me was when his relationship broke down with my children and he didn’t seem like he would move heaven and earth to fix it,” explained the mom to Logan Brown, Madison Brown Brush, Hunter Brown, Garrison Brown, Gabriel Brown and Savanah Brown. “And I thought, OK, that was what was really holding me here.”
Even when Kody broached the idea of reconciling in the Nov. 3 episode, it was a non-negotiable for Janelle.
“I don’t know how I would ever reconcile with him and have him not have a relationship with my kids,” she said. “No, I’m going to always choose my kids.”
Ethan Miller/Getty ImagesKody Brown Feels He’s Been “Excommunicated” from His Own Family
That was the explanation Kody gave for not working harder to mend the rifts he was experiencing with several of his adult children.
“I don’t fit in the family anymore,” he griped in the Sept. 15 episode. Noting he was still fully married to Robyn and parenting their five kids together—Dayton Brown, Aurora Brown, Breanna Brown, Solomon Brown and Ariella Brown—he added, “and then I have some relationship with some of the other kids and it’s infrequent. And so I’m like, what do I do with all of this? It doesn’t feel like a family.”
Instagram/TLCRobyn Brown and Kody Brown’s Marriage Was on Shaky Ground
Despite being truly monogamous for the first time in their 14-year union, “We’re probably doing the worst we’ve ever done in our marriage,” Robyn confessed in the season 19 premiere. “It’s been tough between us. He doesn’t know who to blame, himself or one of the other wives. Kody’s feeling a lot of rejection and so I think he’s kind of looking at me going, ‘Are you going to reject me too?'”
As a result, she revealed, “I’m on my toes. I’m having to consistently make sure that he is not sabotaging our relationship.” The hardest part, she summed up: “There’s no resource to help with the idea that I’m still married to a man who’s going through divorces.”
Kody, meanwhile, was having a crisis of confidence, sharing, “I can’t look myself in the mirror and say, ‘Hey, dude. I love you.'”
For Robyn, it was a struggle to watch her former sister wives embrace their new era. “They’re all moving on,” she noted in the Oct. 27 episode. “I feel like the idiot that got left behind.”
Christine Brown/InstagramMadison Brush Isn’t Speaking to Her Dad
Add Janelle’s eldest daughter Madison to the list of kids Kody doesn’t currently have a relationship with. “I know that Maddie has not had any conversations with her dad,” Janelle explained during the premiere. “He’s not called, she’s not called him, and she doesn’t have any relationship with Robin. She’s pretty much written them both off.”
At issue, said Janelle, is Kody having a half-hearted relationship with Maddie’s kids Axel, Evangalynn and Josephine: “She doesn’t really want him to have any contact unless he can commit to it.”
As a result, Janelle shared in the Sept. 22 episode, Kody “did sort of cut off communication” with Maddie and her husband Caleb Brush (whose sister was married to Kody’s brother) “when the family started to really dissolve.”
With Kody not visiting or calling, Maddie “has been Mama Bear to the extreme,” added Janelle. “She has felt like until he can be consistent and show up and not be dramatic that she feels like it’s probably better if they don’t know about him.”
And while Robyn noted she’s been encouraging Kody to reach out and mend things, she said, “I think the kids should be doing the same thing, too.”
For now, though, Kody doesn’t seem ready to repair the rift, griping that every time he spoke to his daughter, “It was a fish for gossip and I got tired of it.”
TLCKody Brown Once Claimed He Never Loved Meri Brown
Love is meant to be multiplied, not subtracted. And yet Kody admitted he did just that with his previous claims that he never loved his ex wives.
“It’s more of like a knee jerk reaction,” he said during the June 15 one-on-one special, insisting he was reeling from them “trashing” him. “I was deep in the throes of reactionary vitriol for the past three years.”
Which is why, he said, he alluded to Meri that he never truly loved her while they were spending their anniversary together.
Recounting the conversation to a pal in a September 2024 episode, Meri insisted she knew he loved her.
But if he didn’t, the mom to Leon Brown said in a confessional, why did he ever propose?
“When a single young man meets a single young woman, why would he choose to marry her and just affirm and force love for her when he didn’t love her?” she wondered. “How cruel is that? To pick me out of a crowd and just be like, ‘I pick you to try to force myself to love for the next 32 years’?”
Kody’s response, he shared in his own confessional: “Oh, Meri has her little accusations now.”
Though, he would share that they never enjoyed a honeymoon period.
“This marriage was on the rocks the entire marriage,” he insisted on the Oct. 20 episode. “And how would I know that? Because I had such a better relationship with Janelle, with Christine, with Robyn.”
But he stayed out of fear, noting, “Leadership will never allow you to marry again if you’re discarding wives.”
InstagramJanelle Brown Threatened Legal Action Against Kody Brown
Though she was undecided on if she’d like to build on Coyote Pass or simply sell it off, Janelle noted that step one was paying off the Arizona property. And with Kody unwilling to talk to her about the situation, “I think I’m going to have to lawyer up,” she confessed to former sister wife Christine Brown in the Sept. 22 episode. “Because I think that’s the only way I’m ever going to get any kind of decision out of him.”
And Janelle acknowledged that without a legal marriage to Kody, “I really have no legal rights to make any kind of claim on Kody’s property.” As she put it, “It’s not like I’m just calling a lawyer and saying I need to divorce this person. No, it’s really complicated because there’s no legal marriage.”
TLCKody Brown Supposedly Divulged Private Information to His Other Wives
Kody’s explanation for not talking with Janelle about their Arizona property is that he no longer trusted her.
“We will pay off the property when the time comes,” he insisted in a confessional during the Sept. 22 episode, “and I’m not giving you any details about what I’m doing or whatever because I’m tired of disclosing information that goes through the gossip mill of our broken family.”
A bit of a pot calling the kettle black, Janelle said in her own interview.
“He leaks like a sieve,” she shared. “He told me stuff about his other relationships and his other wives that I was like, ‘I don’t think you’re supposed to be telling me that.'”
TLCFamily Money Paid for Robyn Brown’s House
Back when the family’s love was still multiplying rather than dividing, they used to pool their money into one pot.
“We would use all the resources to help one person, then we would all rally to support the other person,” Janelle explained on the Sept. 22 episode. “That’s how it always worked until the last 10 years or so. And all of a sudden it’s been about my estate and everyone needs their own estate.”
So when Robyn was in need of a home in Arizona, they all pitched in to buy her $1.65 million five-bedroom spread—which was listed for sale this past August.
The intention was that it would be an asset for the family, said Robyn. But when Janelle suggested that they all put their names on the mortage, she was rebuffed. Kody was “like, ‘No, no, we need to protect, you know, protect Robyn’s estate,'” Janelle recalled. So now that she’s extricating herself from the family, continued Janelle, she’d like her portion of the Coyote Pass proceeds “and I’d like to recoup some of the money I put into Robyn’s house.”
But that could be a tough sell.
“We were working together for so long,” noted Robyn. And with Janelle saying she’s owed money from them, Robyn added, “It’s like, how do you calculate? How do you figure that out? It’s so confusing.”
Janelle Brown/InstagramJanelle Brown Questioned How Kody Brown Handled the Family Money
Griping about the family’s inability to pay off Coyote Pass, Janelle said Kody claimed to have “all these other debts.” And, yet, she’s watched him snap up other assets like trailers and home décor. “I see all the art on their walls,” she said of Robyn and Kody’s home. “I see all these things. And that’s fine, I have money and I’ve spent it on things, too.” (For his part Kody said much of his cash went to buying cars—”Basically had a fleet”—and insurance for the kids.)
And while Janelle acknowledged she wasn’t sure how Kody and Robyn handled their finances, “I used to always be surprised at how nice her backyard was. It was completely finished. And there was always, like, stuff at her house. And I was like, ‘Wow. Huh.'”
Bottom line, she said, “He doesn’t prioritize what I need or what I want.” And that issue eventually wore her down. “I think after a while, I began to see it, and my kids were getting very angry about it, like my adult children. Like, ‘What the hell, Mom?'”
Robyn’s take, however, was that she was very careful with her budget after her first marriage fell apart.
“I used to be not so great with money,” she shared during the Sept. 22 episode. “When I was young, I had hard knocks, and then I learned during my divorce really how to budget myself very, very well.” As for her fellow sister wives, she said, “You just must have had a different priority of where your money was going to go than I did, that’s all.”
Janelle Brown/InstagramJanelle Brown and Christine Brown Woolley See Their Kids as the Core Group of the Family
At the moment, Janelle acknowledged in the Sept. 22 episode, while she and Christine—mom to Aspyn Brown, Mykelti Brown Padron, Paedon Brown, Gwendlyn Brown, Ysabel Brown and Truely Brown—get together with their broods, “There’s no contact, really, with Meri or Robyn or Kody. I don’t really foresee that’s going to change much.”
InstagramKody Brown Thinks His Wives Leaving Hurt His Relationship With the Kids
Calling their set-up with four homes on one cul-de-sac during their stretch in Las Vegas “the best time of my life,” Kody said, “Everything was going along smoothly and Maddie and Caleb were around and it was great having them around. And I loved Caleb. He was definitely like family.”
But “things started to fall apart” in Arizona as they clashed over coronavirus-related precautions. Then when his marriages fell apart, he said, his bonds with the kids followed: “It just made all those relationships go sour.”
But Christine insisted their were issues well before she announced she was leaving in late 2021.
“All the kids that were frustrated were frustrated way before I left,” she said on the Sept. 22 episode. “My leaving didn’t change his kids’ relationship with him. Kody can still fix his relationships with his children.”
Though it’ll definitely take some work.
“I’m so angry about how I’ve been treated that I haven’t gotten past that,” Kody explained. “Here’s the thing is I’m not willing to take blame for things that my wife or ex-wife is sitting there telling them that I did. I hope the time comes when the contempt will subside. We’ll be able to find forgiveness and love again.”
InstagramKody Brown Said His Marriage to Meri Brown Was Miserable
Kody revealed he and Meri didn’t know each other all that well when they wed both spiritually and legally at the age of 21 and 19, respectively. (They eventually filed for divorce in 2014 so Kody could legally adopt Robyn’s three eldest children from her first marriage.)
“When we got married, she was very different and I think just there’s some baggage that Meri had that I didn’t know about,” Kody explained. “Initially, I felt like I could live with it.” Claiming that everything was a fight, he said, “I can’t live in a world where she is constantly angry at me.”
Yet, he was unable to leave. A man, in plural marriage, said Kody, “If he wants to stay faithful and in the faith, he cannot request a divorce. It’s not allowed. So I was not able to get out of that relationship. At the same time, I didn’t necessarily want out of the relationship. I wanted to know if we could save and fix it.”
Hence the mixed messages, he acknowledged of Meri thinking they would work everything out. But, every time they were together, continued Kody, “She wasn’t nice, she wasn’t fun, she wasn’t kind, she wasn’t interesting. I’m trying to be curious with her and I’m bored.”
To be fair, he added, he could see why Meri felt abandoned, “But I didn’t kick me out. Christine, Janelle and Meri all chose to have me leave the home.”
Meri Brown/InstagramKody Brown Didn’t Agree With Meri Brown Wanting a Spiritual Divorce
Though Janelle and Christine felt they didn’t need to divorce Kody because their marriage was never legal, Meri asked their church for an official separation, called a release, in late 2022.
“When each of us four ladies married Kody, it was through our church,” she explained in the Sept. 22 episode. “Obviously we can’t all be legally married, but it was what we called a covenant. So I feel like it’s best to terminate that because we’re not moving forward with any marriage and I don’t want to be, like, sealed to him for eternity if he doesn’t want me. And I’m at a place that, like, let’s just separate this completely.”
Kody was resistant to the idea, she added, not wanting to “acknowledge the authority” of the church leaders.
“The damage was done so badly that we’re not going to reconcile no matter what,” Kody explained of his stance. “And so however, we are made accountable to God, I don’t want to be accountable to this church and all their BS. So I’m going to let Meri go and do her thing because if I’m angry at her it, it becomes a fight. And I needed her just to go away because it just took forever for her to finally realize it’s been done and over for years.”
InstagramMany of Kody Brown’s Kids Aren’t Speaking to Each Other
A text message discussion over a 2021 holiday gift exchange turned particularly ugly for the 18 Brown offspring. “It all went bad, it all went south,” detailed Christine. “Kody and Robyn and their kids were on one side and they wanted nothing to do with Janelle, me, our kids. And there was a split that happened after this text thread.”
Robyn’s take was that her three older kids felt the exchange was “emotionally unsafe” and said they needed to take a step back from the relationship. “But it was never anything about, ‘We don’t want to see you again, we don’t want anything to do with you,'” she insisted. “It was just about, like, ‘Hey this got yucky.'”
For his part, Gabriel is hoping that they could find their way back to each other.
“The thing I want most is to just have a relationship with Robyn’s children again,” he confessed in the Oct. 13 episode. “In middle school, Aurora was my favorite person to hang out with. And in high school, I would always try to hit Dayton up. But I’m, I’m not hopeful for a relationship with Dad And Robyn.”
Photo by Gabe Ginsberg/FilmMagicRobyn Brown’s Kids Never Felt Welcomed Into the Family
“I have been told directly, multiple circumstances by multiple different people, that I was not accepted,” Aurora insisted of coming into the family when her mom wed Kody in 2010, “that I was not their sister, that they didn’t consider or see me that way.”
And her sister Breanna said she felt the parents “could have done a better job with, you know, connecting us as a family and it never really happened.”
But Christine isn’t sure how they could have opened their arms any wider.
“Robyn’s kids and Robyn were invited to everything,” she insisted. “I would just say, ‘Just come in, come into the house anytime you want.'”
Meanwhile, she added, her daughter Ysabel Brown was very close to Robyn’s kids and Mykelti Brown Padron even lived with them for a stretch: “There were hard times and my kids were frustrated, but they always considered Robyn’s kids their siblings just the same.”
