Janelle Speaks Out: Why Kody’s Marriages FELL APART! | Sister Wives
As it turned out, what Sister Wives star Janelle Brown once shared with former husband Kody Brown wasn’t all that great.
“When you marry into plural marriage, at least in our faith,” she explained on the TLC series’ June 1 one-on-one special, “you are expected to become more than you are.”
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In other words, with a greater number or unions comes greater responsibilities.
As a husband to Meri Brown, Christine Brown and Robyn Brown, in addition to Janelle, “He was expected to make those relationships, all of them, work,” stressed the 56-year-old. While the marriages didn’t necessarily need to be equal “because nothing’s ever fair or equal,” Janelle acknowledged, it was the patriarch’s responsibility to “meet the needs of all the different relationships, right? Whatever that looked like.”
Instead, the father of 18, watched as Christine announced the end of their 25-year union in November 2021, followed by Janelle and Meri roughly a year later.
Behind the divide, Janelle speculated, was Kody’s inability to live up to his multitude of vows, particularly when he spent much of the pandemic holed up with Robyn and their kids Dayton Brown, 25, Aurora Brown, 23, Breanna Brown, 21, Solomon Brown, 13, and Ariella Brown, 9,
“I think he really did—especially during COVID—be like, ‘I’m just going to shrug this off. You guys don’t like each other. I’m tired. You’re going to shorten my life span if I keep doing this,'” Janelle reflected. “Like all of a sudden he’s like, “‘I just don’t want to do it anymore.’ He kind of threw this little temper tantrum.”
TLCAnd after he stopped stomping his feet, he realized his first three brides had used theirs to walk away.
“He doesn’t embrace the culture, everybody has left the church,” Janelle acknowledged of their previous association with fundamentalist Mormon group Apostolic United Brethren, “but he is a failure as far as what’s expected of a man who enters into plural marriage.”
And she’s not his only spouse reaching that judgment.
“In the religion, in the polygamist world, if you’ve got a guy who three of his wives leave,” Christine detailed during the June 1 esisode, “it’s a problem with the man. And when you see families where the guy loses all the wives, you’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s him. That’s all him.'”
It’s the sort of burden that could leave a man feeling as if he’d taken a knife to the kidneys.
Asked by host Sukanya Krishnan if she thought that was a tough pill for Kody to swallow, Christine responded, “I think it must be. He had this dream and this vision of everything beautiful and perfect.”
But instead of accepting that bitter medicine, “He puts it on all of us for leaving,” noted Christine. “And it’s like before we left, it was broken. Before we left, everything had fallen apart.”
Because if you ask Gwendlyn Brown—one of the Christine’s six children with Kody—their relationship was unraveling well before the stay-at-home orders were handed down.
“I felt like they should have divorced for a while,” the 23-year-old recently admitted to Teen Vogue. “I remember one time as a kid, I saw them arguing, and my first thought was, ‘I hope they get a divorce.’ What kid thinks that, right?”
Of course, she’s not the only Sister Wives standout sharing her truth. See what the TLC series’ other stars have detailed about their infamous brood.
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.”
