Sister Wives' Meri Brown Details Toughest Part of Fertility Struggle

Meri 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."

Robyn 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."

Kody Brown Watched Ex Christine Brown's Wedding to David Woolley

Turns out even Kody said "I do" to seeing his former bride marry her now-husband in October 2023. 

"I watched their wedding," he admitted on the Jan. 18 episode. "And I was smiling through the entire thing almost. It was fun to see Christine in a great spot. It's sort of kind of her dream come true."

Janelle Brown Is Considering a Spiritual Divorce From Ex Kody Brown

Officially done with former husband Kody Brown (and his nice pecs and six-pack abs), Janelle Brown revealed in Sister Wives' season 20 opener that she's borrowing a page from Meri Brown's playbook. 

Never legally entwined to Kody during their 29-year marriage, "I had sort of thought about a spiritual divorce a long time ago and didn't even realize it was an option," the patriarch's second wife detailed on the Sept. 28 premiere. "And so when Meri got one, I'm like, 'Oh, hey, Meri, who do I call?'" 

And her former sister wife—who was granted a spiritual release from their former church on the grounds of abandonment—was more than happy to fill in some blanks. Said Janelle, "She has been kind of helping me get in touch with everybody."

Madison Brush Would Like to Reconcile With Dad Kody Brown

Madison Brush is still working through the sins of her father. Amid her ongoing estrangement from dad Kody, Madison—the second oldest of his and Janelle's six kids—admitted on the Sept. 28 episode that she's still struggling with the separation. 

"You want your dad to show up," the mother of four shared in a confessional alongside husband Caleb Brush. "You want reconciliation. I know I played a part and I’m angry because I’m still trying to learn to not be disappointed.”

It's a lesson she's struggling to master. "I’m still learning how to just see him for who he is," she noted. "I’m trying to understand that maybe he didn’t know how to show up. He might be hurting." 

He also might not be willing to cede too much ground. 

Kody stressed his desire to have healing with Meri, Janelle, third wife Christine Brown and their children, explaining, "I think we're in an impasse here because this healing can only happen on their terms only."

Kody Brown Has This Concern About His Sex Life With Wife Robyn Brown

To hear Kody's fourth and sole remaining wife Robyn Brown tell it, she always wanted the family, not just the man. "I had marriage proposals," she revealed on the Sept. 28 episode. Not necessarily an on-bended-knee situation, she noted, just "different men at different times said, you know, 'I'd marry you in heartbeat.'" 

Her response never wavered: "I was just like, 'Well, I plan to live a plural marriage.'" And had Kody been single when he pursued her, rather than a devoted family man with three wives, "I would have said the same thing to you." 

But now that they find themselves as unintentional monogamists, asserted Kody, "It's you and me, baby."

Though he admittedly had one concern. 

"There's something I want maybe more than you do," Kody told Robyn, alluding to their sex life. The way he saw it, Kody continued in a confessional, "A polygamist is getting more than he wants and a monogamist isn't getting enough."

Meri Brown Reveals an Ex Broke Up With Her Over Her Polygamous Past

Throwing herself into dating, Meri knows precisely what she's looking for in a man: In addition to a tall guy, "super important for me is to find somebody who wants to travel with me," the avid road-tripper explained in the Oct. 5 episode. "And also must not have cats. Must love dogs." 

And she definitely needs someone who won't scare easily. 

"There was a guy that I was talking to," she detailed of one of her more troubling dating adventures. Once he discovered she was a polygamist, "He was like, 'I can't continue talking to you. This is not something that I'm even interested in or open to,'" she shared. "And it was very hurtful to me. Because I was a polygamist, you're not interested in pursuing a relationship with me?"

For Meri, she continued, "It was like my first real big realization that that's going to inhibit some people from even wanting to start talking to me."

Janelle Brown Thinks No One Else Really Wanted to Live on Coyote Pass

Janelle is convinced she was the only member of her sprawling fam who truly wanted to land on Coyote Pass. 

Discussing the family's standoff over the 14-acre property they purchased ahead of their 2018 move to Flagstaff, Ariz., Janelle admitted on the Oct 3 episode, "I'm not actually sure I ever had the dream of us all being out on Coyote Pass." 

Because while Kody's second wife could imagine herself settling out there—"It's a beautiful piece of property, why not?"—she alleged that it was more of a passing phase for her ex and his other brides. 

"Nobody really wanted to live out there," she said, adding that Christine definitely didn't and Meri would have obliged "if everybody else had done it." 

As for Kody and Robyn, they "had a house that was pretty much there without being there on the property," Janelle surmised of the two-acre, five-bedroom spread they have since sold for $1.7 million. 

So as much as they all howled over the land they initially split into four separate parcels, said Janelle, "I just could see very soon after we moved to Flagstaff that that was not going to be a thing."

Why Kody Brown Thinks He Has a Strained Relationship With "Most" of His Adult Kids

Kody has a theory about why his bonds with the majority of his adult kids (save for Robyn's eldest Dayton, Aurora and Breanna) are kinda garbage. 

"I think most of the relationships between me and my adult children are strained," he acknowledged on the Oct. 5 episode. "It's an issue of trash talk and innuendo, and it has challenged loyalties and trust on all sides."

And these days, not many of his grown kids are on Team Kody. 

Though Mykelti Padron—one of his six children with Christine—had been the most outwardly supportive of her father, months after she and husband Tony Padron made the move to North Carolina with their three children, she gave her take on the rift.

"I think that if he took more accountability in any of his actions, his kids—maybe not all of them, but at least some of them—would reach out," she noted during an October 2024 fan Q&A shared on the Instagram account @withoutacrystalball. "Instead of blaming the children, or blaming how they feel about his relationship with his other wife or blaming the parents or blaming gossip or whatever, if he just said, 'Look, I understand I did blank wrong. I’m sorry. Can we talk about it?' I feel like that would go such a long way."

Janelle Brown Admits She Would Have Taken Half of Kody Brown's Assets

With the April 2025 sale of Coyote Pass, Janelle and Meri walked away from their marriage to Kody with a nice parting gift. (Christine had already signed over her portion of the land in exchange for keeping the proceeds from the sale of her Arizona home.) 

As Janelle joked to Meri on the Oct. 5 episode, it was "a nice way to just be like, 'See you later. Hope I never see you again. Goodbye.'"

But she certainly wouldn't have waved off an even nicer present. 

Had she been "legally married to Kody," she noted, she absolutely would have taken half of his assets "because it would have been half mine."

Kody Brown Agreed to Sell Coyote Pass for This Reason

Before Kody and Robyn agreed to close the door on their Coyote Pass dreams, they had to open, not a window, but the contract on their new $2.1 million manse. After months of going back and forth with his exes about unloading the massive property, "Selling Coyote Pass became a reality for us," Kody detailed in the Oct. 12 episode, "only when we, we discovered we really wanted this other house."

The dad of 18 is also eager to unload the bad memories of their previous home. "We've experienced a lot of heartache here," he posited. "And we want a new beginning, something different, something new."

Why Kody Brown Feels He Failed at Plural Marriage

Though Kody felt his love should be multiplied—committing to four different wives—his attention wasn't divided all that equally. "I felt like I was devoted to our family and to plural marriage, but then I struggled to be devoted specifically to every single wife and vice versa," he reasoned on the Oct. 19 episode. "I don't think the wives were devoted to me or to each other as a whole." 

Among his missteps, he guessed, was setting up Robyn in her $1.65 million, five-bedroom Flagstaff home while other spouses were making do with less. "I don't know what went wrong," he said of ending his unions to Meri, Janelle and Christine, "but I know that I stirred up a jealousy putting her in this house. My wives, in whatever way, couldn't handle that I was willing to fight so much to make sure that Robyn was safely kept."

Christine Brown Says It Was "A Lot of Work" Being Married to Kody Brown

For Christine, it was hard to take it easy with Kody. "We were married to a guy that was a lot of work," she mused on the Oct. 26 episode. "He had a lot of things that he liked and a lot of specifics, like certain dietary restrictions, his grooming and things like that."

Bottom line, she noted, "It was a lot." 

Enough that Janelle isn't exactly looking to multiply her love after their split. "I think maybe Kody was a lot of work," she told Christine and her now-husband David Woolley. "So I think that a relationship must be really hard." 

Which is why she's so resistant to David's urges for her to sign up for FarmersOnly, telling cameras, "David just can't handle that I'm just not going to go date because I'm like, dude, I, no, no, no."

Christine Brown Says Kody Brown Sometimes Called Her By the Wrong Name

Kody was quite careful not to call his wives every name in the book. "Kody would rarely slip up and call us the wrong name," Christine insisted in the Nov. 2 episode. "There's certain moments you don't want to hear another woman's name. You know those moments that I'm talking about. Never happened." 

Though there were some close calls. 

"I would catch myself a lot," Kody admitted. "And I've certainly done it. I had a way of starting it sometimes and then pivoting." 

Christine Brown Felt Betrayed By Robyn Brown

To hear Christine tell it, she felt quite stabbed in the kidney by her former sister wife. 

"I feel betrayed by Robyn," she detailed to David on the Nov. 2 episode "I felt like I could never really trust her, ever." The issue, she explained to cameras, is that she "would tell her things that I thought were in confidence and then I'd get in trouble for them and Kody would get mad. I can't trust her. So I stopped confiding in her." 

But Robyn insisted she was just trying to play marriage counselor. 

"Christine would say to me, 'I wish Kody would know this. I wish Kody would understand this. I'm struggling with this,'" she explained. "Me being kind of a naive fool, I thought I could help, but I should have just stayed out of it completely."

Meri Brown Had to Draw "Hard Boundaries" With Ex Kody Brown

Once somewhat charmed by her stance as Kody's favorite ex-wife, Meri wasn't interested in indulging any of her former husband's attempts at small talk when he scheduled a video chat to discuss the potential sale of their Arizona property. 

"I don't know what happened with Meri because I remember helping her move to her place in Parowan, Utah, and it was all fun and games and cordial," he mused of their shared chat with Janelle on the Nov. 2 episode. "And since then to now, it's got weird." 

But Meri insisted she was just focused on business, not pleasure after taking in what Kody had said to cameras in previous seasons.

"I just had to draw some really hard boundaries," she explained. "And when we get on this video call and he's being all friendly and trying to act like things are normal after some of the things that he has said to and about me and my friends, that's not going to fly."

Kody Brown Felt He Should Have Been Able to Vet Christine Brown's Husband David Woolley

Though Christine answered now-husband David's 2023 proposal with a very enthusiastic yes, her former spouse feels he should have had a say. 

"My daughter lives in David's house," Kody explained of his and Christine's youngest, Truely. "I should know David." 

In fact, he mused, he "should have had the right, even, to discriminate David."

Janelle Brown Doesn't Think She'll Get Back the Money She Loaned Kody Brown and Robyn Brown

Excited about recouping her share of Coyote Pass, Janelle wasn't about to howl over losing the money she'd given Robyn and Kody for their five-bedroom Arizona home. 

While her kids "feel like I should pursue the money that I put into Robyn's house," she shared in the Nov. 2 episode, "it's going to be a fight." 

Should she try to get the money out of Kody, she continued, "There's always a billion reasons why he doesn't owe it." 

Exhibit A: His feeling that he'd already repaid that particular favor. "Janelle helped Robyn and I buy our house and I settled that debt with Janelle back in January," he insisted. "And she just stated to me after that was done in January or February, she said, 'Our debt is settled, you're good with me. It was more than fair.'"

Kody Brown Still Has Women Asking to Join His Family

Should Kody still be interested in having his love multiplied, there's no shortage of options. 

As he revealed to Robyn on the Nov. 2 episode, "I got another one of those emails from some woman talking about plural marriage." 

The unnamed person was "kind of chastising me for deciding to quit plural marriage," he explained to his sole remaining bride. And then she offered up her services. "She's calling me out," Kody explained to Robyn, "and then asking sort of like to get to know us for the purpose of joining the family." 

Truthfully, it wasn't an immediate no from Robyn, who admitted in a confessional, "For a split second, I think, 'Oh, wouldn't this be great? This is what I've always wanted for my life.' And, 'Hmm, would they fit.'" 

Ultimately, though, it was a no. 

"I find it very inappropriate that they would send it to Kody," she explained of her issue with the outreach. "It's not usually proper to go hitting on a guy. You have to go through the sister wives." 

Madison Brush Hasn't Spoken to Dad Kody Brown in Years

Though Kody is now acknowledging the estrangement he's labeled "the failure of the family," he has a lot of work ahead of him if he'd like a passing grade. 

Discussing Maddie's fourth pregnancy on the series' Nov. 9 episode, Janelle admitted that her eldest daughter didn't even tell her dad she was expecting. "He'll find out," Kody's second wife added, noting there was no reason to keep him in the loop beforehand. "They haven't spoken for a long time. It's probably been two or three years." 

Meri Brown Says Janelle Brown Made Her Feel "Special" When She Joined the Family

Seems Janelle didn't just want the man, she truly wanted the family. When she wed Kody three years into his union with Meri—after briefly being married to Meri's brother—"There's so many emotions surrounding that," Meri recounted during the Nov. 9 episode. "I always felt like when Janelle got married, she was being really cool in the way that she was like including me and she didn't want to hurt my feelings."

At the time, Meri was filled with jealousy and other emotions as they tried "to figure out, like, how to do this plural marriage thing," she acknowledged. "And that always made me feel very special that she did that."

Meri Brown Says Kody Brown and Robyn Brown Wanted Her to Sign a Confidentiality Agreement

Meri isn't one to be silenced. But things got hairy when the family hammered out a deal to sell Coyote Pass—the 14-acre property they purchased when they moved to Arizona. 

"I think the issue was getting our names put on the appropriate pieces of properties," Meri explained during the Nov. 16 episode. "There was a lot of conversation surrounding that and I don't know why it couldn't just be signed on."

She was also puzzled by another of Kody's moves. 

"He's putting the whole f--king thing on me that I slowed it down, that I'm the problem," she detailed angrily. "But it had to do with the fact that they were trying to get me to sign a confidentiality agreement that I was not willing to agree to. Why do you want me to sign a confidentiality agreement? Why are you trying to silence me?" 

To hear Robyn tell it, though, their discussions were nothing to howl about. 

"Meri and I have always been able to talk pretty frankly with each other," she explained. "I was really just trying to find out what she needed and it really, like my intention is always in her best interest."

Christine Brown Reveals She Used to Have to Put Groceries Back at the Store

For Christine, more money has definitely come with fewer problems. Because the mom of six can still remember how it felt when money was so tight for the family there was no wiggle room for grocery shopping. 

"It's embarrassing to be at the checkout counter and realize you've overspent," she detailed on the Nov. 16 episode. "And, yeah, you can write that check, but it's going to bounce. You had to put stuff back."

Other times they had to walk back plans to pay for certain essentials. 

Noted Meri, "We'd have, like, our weekly or monthly meetings, like, 'All right, which bill is most important to pay this week?'"

Robyn Brown Says She And Kody Brown Had "Big Fights" About Coyote Pass

When it came to the eventual sale of Coyote Pass, Robyn said she was willing to be the big bad wolf. "This has been important to me to make sure that everybody was treated fairly in this situation," she explained on the Nov. 23 episode after insisting that she, Kody, Janelle and Meri each walk away with a quarter of the profits. "So, yeah, I fought him. I had some pretty big fights with him about it." 

In the end, noted Kody, when the 14-acre parcel sold in April 2025, "We just said, OK, we'll just do the best we can to clear this up and make it. You just get everybody their 25 percent."

Janelle Brown Feels Kody Brown Stopped Working at His Marriages

While Janelle stopped short of suggesting Kody went through a mid-life crisis, she shared on the Nov. 23 episode that something shifted once he hit his milestone birthday.

Happily ensconced with fourth wife Robyn at that point, "Kody turned 50 and all of a sudden he started making all this noise about he was carrying the whole family and I think he had this wife who just was his soulmate or whatever," Janelle detailed, explaining that he felt maintaining four unions was "too exhausting." 

But Kody took issue with the idea that he didn't put in the work. 

"I never shirked my responsibilities ever in this family," he insisted in his own confessional. "I was always there and I gave 110 percent every time. I felt like I wasn't getting that from the rest of my family." 

And, with three soon-to-be ex wives pushing him to change, "I guess we all went through menopause together," he added, "because there is such thing as male menopause and my testosterone probably just fell to the floor and I just didn't want to do the hard work anymore."

Janelle Brown Says Her Mom Married Kody Brown's Dad to Try to "Save" Her From Polygamy

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em? That's the stance Janelle's mom Sheryl Usher seemed to take when she first learned her daughter was exploring plural marriage. "My mom came to save me from the polygamists because no daughter of hers was going to marry some into some crazy cult," Janelle detailed on the series' Nov. 30 episode. But instead of driving a wedge between Janelle and her soon-to-be husband, "She ended up marrying Kody's dad," Janelle continued of Sheryl's October 1992 vows to Winn Brown, "and they actually got married three months before we did." 

Admittedly, their union made the family tree a bit more complicated. "When they decided to get married, I was like, that's going to be a little hard to explain, but all right," Janelle acknowledged. "It was a little weird at first, but I'm like, OK, it's great. Like somebody's here with me, I guess."

Ysabel Brown Admits She and Dad Kody Brown "Do Not Talk Very Often"

To hear Ysabel Brown tell it, she wishes her time with dad Kody wasn't quite so divided. As the second youngest of Christine's six kids explained on the Nov. 30 episode, "My dad and I aren't like, close, close, close, close, close, close."

Instead, noted Ysabel, her mom "can be the dad and she can be the mom and she's perfect at it." And stepdad David is "awesome, too." 

Still, Ysabel stopped short of labeling her relationship with Kody as fractured. "I mean, he's still my dad," she insisted, "and I love him."

Janelle Brown Shares Her First Years of Marriage With Kody Brown Were Hard

Though Janelle still feels the family had something special, that spark wasn't apparent early on. 

"There were things that happened, especially that first year or two that I kind of wish he would have stood up for me as much as he maybe, by default, sort of took the other position," Janelle explained, not-so-subtly referring to her and Meri's rocky relationship. "So, add that to the fact that there was a lot of jealousy and insecurity and stuff that we were working through and it just was not good."

Pregnant with her eldest Logan Brown less than a year into marriage while Kody worked as a traveling salesman, "His time at home was limited," Janelle reflected. As such, she "learned to just keep the peace and I lost a lot of my identity." 

Kody Brown Reveals What Caused His Rift With Meri Brown

If you wanna be Meri's copacetic ex-lover, you gotta get with her friends. After she and Kody first separated, he helped her move out of her Arizona home, "And when we depart, it's like 'We're going to be kind to each other, right?'" he detailed on the Dec. 28 episode. "And the next thing I see is her friends just trashing me." 

As a result, he continued, "I got right in her face, on the phone, but I was like, 'You need to have your friends shut their mouths.' And I berated her friends. And I think she took that really, really personal." 

But here's their story from A to Z: "There is a tendency for us to escalate a conversation—to not even be able to talk—in seconds," Kody recounted. "It's explosive. We never managed that in our marriage. if we want any kind of relationship at all, we're going to have to manage it now."

Christine Brown and Kody Brown Are Distant Cousins

Christine and Kody may have ended their marriage, but they'll always be family. Literally. "Third cousins, once removed is fully legal," she explained on the Dec. 28 episode. "I’m third cousins once removed from Kody." 

The connection became something of a family joke, shared Janelle, "but they are so distantly related, it's ridiculous. I think in the polygamist families, this kind of stuff happens all the time. It wasn't the kind of relationship where you saw each other at a family reunion, like, it was a very distant relationship. But they would always joke about being cousins. It just is a small community."