The Transformation Of TLC's Sister Wives Is A Staggering Sight

This article contains references to suicide.

Since first making its television debut in 2010, TLC reality show “Sister Wives” has taken viewers on a wild ride that, given the show’s origins, proved to be much more unhinged than anyone could have anticipated. The show brought viewers face to face with a family of polygamists, featuring patriarch Kody Brown, his wives — Meri, Christine, Janelle, and (eventually) Robyn — and their combined children. As Los Angeles Times TV critic Mary McNamara pointed out in her review of the series premiere, “Sister Wives” initially depicted the unconventional family’s rather harmonious life together, as strange as it may have been for non-polygamous viewers to fathom.

As time passed and the series’ popularity grew, fractures in the family became impossible to ignore. Ratings skyrocketed as spellbound viewers watched the unfolding drama that propelled the show to become one of cable television’s highest-rated series. It took a few years, but the plural marriage began to unspool, as one wife left Kody, followed by another, and then another, until only wife Robyn remained. “They made choices that separated us,” Kody said of his trio of exes during a 2024 episode of “Sister Wives,” as reported by Us Weekly. “And maybe I made choices that separated us, but they eventually moved on.”

Eventually — and more than a little ironically — television’s most notorious polygamist ended up in a shockingly traditional marriage to just one woman. As the show’s 19th season kicked off in the fall of 2024, with no signs of ending anytime soon, it’s crystal clear that the transformation of TLC’s “Sister Wives” is a staggering sight.

Kody Brown’s journey toward becoming one of America’s best-known polygamists began in a surprisingly traditional manner. It all began back in 1990 when Brown married his first wife, Meri Brown. The two had met in church and abstained from a physical relationship until they tied the knot. “I was a little taken with Kody right off the bat,” she wrote in the 2012 book, “Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage.” “He was definitely cute, and had a great attitude. He was talkative and engaged me in conversation, and made me feel comfortable around him.” Kody was likewise smitten as he got to know his future bride. “Meri was so cute and sweet when I met her that I had a hard time suppressing my hopelessly romantic nature,” he wrote in that same book. “I had a sneaking suspicion that we were soulmates …”

Kody and Meri eventually had a child, Leon, who came out as transgender in a 2022 Instagram post. Leon is Meri’s only child with Kody (although far from Kody’s only child).

Over time, both spouses came to feel very differently than what they’d expressed in the book. “Every time I was with her, she wasn’t nice, she wasn’t fun, she wasn’t kind, she wasn’t interesting,” Kody griped about Meri during a 2024 episode of “Sister Wives,” as reported by Us Weekly.

Kody Brown’s marriage to Meri may have begun traditionally but didn’t remain that way for long. In 1993, he officially became a polygamist when he married second wife Janelle; she’d recently split from her first husband, Adam Clark Barber, who was Meri’s brother. Unlike Kody’s first marriage — which was of the legal, state-sanctioned kind — his union with Janelle was a “spiritual” ceremony that was not technically binding, at least from a legal standpoint.

While introducing a second wife into the equation would understandably seem to be a deal-breaker for most marriages, particularly with newlyweds, that was not the case with Kody and his first wife. “If Meri had any misgivings about Janelle, she didn’t voice them to me,” Kody wrote in “Becoming Sister Wives.” “She seemed happy enough to welcome Janelle into our home.”

While Meri struggled with infertility (the couple contemplated having another with the help of IVF but never followed through), that wasn’t the case with Janelle. She and Kody ultimately had six children together: Logan, Madison, Hunter, Gabriel, Savannah, and Garrison (Garrison died in March 2024 at age 25).

Shortly after spiritually marrying Janelle, Kody Brown began courting Christine (he initially sought permission from her father, who was all in on the idea). As Kody wrote in the “Becoming Sister Wives” book, his other two wives seemingly differed in their assessment of his new marital goal. “Janelle was very sweet and accepting of my courtship with Christine,” he wrote, but observed that “Meri was slightly more prickly …”

Kody popped the question, and Christine accepted. While he would have preferred a longer engagement, Christine was eager to become his third wife. “She didn’t want to be running around with a married man,” he explained.

Years later, during a confessional segment in a 2023 episode of “Sister Wives,” Kody offered up a far harsher recollection of how Christine came to join the family. “Christine forced herself into my life, she basically just insisted that we be married,” he declared, as reported by Business Insider. Kody and Christine had six children: daughters Aspyn, Mykelti, Gwendlyn, Ysabel, and Truely, and son Paedon.

In 2009, television producer Timothy Gibbons set out to make a reality show focusing on plural marriage. He found a home for his concept on TLC, which had already struck reality TV gold with reality shows about unconventional families, such as “Jon & Kate Plus 8” and “19 Kids and Counting.” When he saw Kody Brown and his brood featured on a British news program, Gibbons knew he had found the right family and tracked them down.

Speaking with Variety ahead of the series premiere, Janelle Brown explained why the family agreed to be filmed for a reality show. “We want to tell our story,” she said, noting that their goal was to minimize the stigma surrounding polygamy. “We want people to see for themselves and not what they read,” she added. “Part of the reason for coming out and is not only gaining acceptance but lowering prejudice,” Kody proclaimed. “We hope this helps to have all of society understand it.”

“Sister Wives” debuted on TLC in September 2010, introducing Brown, his three wives, and new addition Robyn, whom he was courting to become wife No. 4 at the time. The show proved to be an instant hit and has continued to be one of the highest-rated series on cable. Once the Browns’ family life began coming apart at the seams, however, TLC’s “Sister Wives” and its stars leaped from television screens to the pages of tabloids, where the Browns have been fixtures ever since.

As the popularity of “Sister Wives” grew from season to season, the finale of the fifth season really exploded, becoming the series’ highest-rated episode to that point. That season proved to be a particularly thorny one for the Browns, involving Kody divorcing his first (and only legal) wife, Meri, so that he could legally marry his fourth wife, Robyn, which would allow him to formally adopt her three children from a previous relationship (the two also share two children of their own).

While Kody insisted that the divorce was simply a matter of logistical legal wrangling that would allow him to become the legitimate father of Robyn’s children, Meri couldn’t hide her devastation when she broke down in tears on camera while signing the divorce papers. “It’s an end of something that we had had, in a way, for 24-and-a-half years,” she said in that episode, as reported by RadarOnline. “But at the same time, I know it’s not, because I have eternity with him; I have eternity with the family. I know it’s not the end.”

She wasn’t entirely wrong. Her divorce from Kody may not have actually been the end of their relationship, but in hindsight, it proved to be the first step in that seemingly inevitable direction.

While Meri seemed to be all in on her plural marriage to Kody Brown and her fellow sister wives while on camera, a very different scenario was playing out behind the scenes. That came to light when she revealed that she’d become so unfulfilled in her marriage that she began looking for love on the internet, beginning an online relationship with a man named Sam — or so she thought. After six months, Meri came to the heartbreaking and embarrassing discovery that her online love was not named Sam and wasn’t even a man, but a woman named Jackie Overton who’d been scamming her.

Meri’s bizarre catfishing scandal played out during the ninth season of “Sister Wives,” while Overton cashed in by writing a book about her con, which she cheekily titled “Almost Meri’ed” (supposedly authored by her online persona). 

In retrospect, Meri came to realize that her faux online boyfriend had expertly laid the groundwork for the eventual erosion of her relationship with Kody. “This catfish was just planting things in my head and telling me how horrible my family was and specifically how horrible Kody was,” she admitted during an episode of “Sister Wives,” as reported by In Touch Weekly. However, she also insisted that being catfished wasn’t necessarily the sole reason for the deterioration of her marriage. “A lot of people like to look at that as the defining moment and the fracture in mine and Kody’s relationship, and it wasn’t,” she said.

Over the course of all those seasons, regular viewers of “Sister Wives” could clearly pick up on the tension forming in the Brown family’s polygamous marriage. However, even those who’d been paying close attention had to be shocked when, in November 2021, Christine made a life-changing announcement via Instagram. “After more than 25 years together, Kody and I have grown apart and I have made the difficult decision to leave,” she wrote. “We will continue to be a strong presence in each other’s lives as we parent our beautiful children and support our wonderful family.”

In December 2022, Janelle made a similar announcement in a “Sister Wives” special, declaring that she, too, was leaving Kody. As she told People in a subsequent interview, it was Christine’s exit that forced her to take a hard look at her own relationship with Kody. She didn’t like what she saw but was nonetheless hesitant to leave. “But I still felt like I should be loyal out of obligation,” she said. The moment of truth, she revealed, occurred when she and Kody had a major fight in December 2021, shortly after Christine announced she was leaving, and she realized the relationship had passed the point of no return. “This burden came off me, and I thought, ‘Wow. Okay, it’s over,'” Janelle said, adding, “If [Christine] hadn’t left, I might’ve stayed.”

In January 2023, Meri confirmed that she’d followed in the footsteps of Christine and Janelle by also leaving Kody. “After more than a decade of working on our relationship in our own unique ways, we have made the decision to permanently terminate our marriage relationship,” she wrote in a statement she shared via Instagram. Later that year, viewers watched it all play out during a November 2023 episode of “Sister Wives,” with all the raw emotions of their brutal breakup on full display.

“I know it’s not fair for me to be alone like I have been for years,” Meri said, as reported by ET Online. “I really feel like I was emotionally abandoned by him many, many years ago, well before the catfishing,” she added. For his part, Kody seemed to take the end of his relationship with Meri in stride. “I mean, it’s been maybe a wasted seven years for Meri, I have no idea,” he said. “But we’ve agreed now, and I hope she finds peace because I will.”

That left reality TV’s most famous polygamist in a rare position, married (legally) to just one woman, fourth wife Robyn. “Robyn came into our family specifically because she intended to live plural marriage,” Kody observed. “This appears to be the end of our plural marriage.”

Following her announcement that she’d split from Kody, Meri dove back into the dating pool and began seeing Amos Andrews. Feeling a sense of freedom that she hadn’t experienced since she was a teenager, she eagerly shared details about the relationship on social media, taking the romance public in January 2024 when she revealed they had been dating since October 2023. 

Sadly, just a month later, she let her Instagram followers know that they’d broken up after just four months of dating. “Just because I care a lot about someone, and him me, does not equate to full compatibility for a long-term relationship,” she wrote in an Instagram post announcing the sad news.

During a subsequent appearance on a podcast, “The Sarah Fraser Show,” Meri admitted that one factor that influenced why things didn’t work out was that her new beau had been unprepared for the intense public scrutiny that he suddenly experienced by, whether he’d intended to or not, entering the “Sister Wives” universe. “He did not sign up for this — except for he kind of did, because I said, ‘You know what’s gonna happen once we put you out on social media, if you wanna be talked about on my Instagram,'” Meri said, via People. “I knew what to expect … but he had no idea,” she added.

Meri wasn’t the only “Sister Wives” ex to explore a new romance after splitting from Kody. Not long after breaking ties, Christine began dating David Wooley, and unlike Meri’s experience, that relationship stood the test of time. In April 2023, he popped the question. “David treats me like a queen and tells me I’m beautiful every day,” she gushed to People about their engagement. “I’ve never been in love like this before, and the world seems like a brighter place with him in it.” She and Wooley got married that October, tying the knot in Moab, Utah. “It’s a fairytale,” she said in another interview with People. “It’s everything I never thought I would have. I get to walk down the aisle to David, him just looking at me the way that he does, it’s a dream come true.”

Kody shared his somewhat surprising opinion about Christine’s marriage in his own interview with People, teasing what viewers could expect in the upcoming 19th season of “Sister Wives.” “And I got to tell you, it’s been a real relief, because I literally watch the show now and hope it’s more about Christine and David than about the rest of us, because they’re falling in love, and it’s cute,” he said.

As Kody Brown had pointed out, Robyn joined the family because of her very specific desire to be a sister wife in a plural marriage. When his other three wives flew the coop, leaving her as the Kody’s sole spouse, she found herself in unfamiliar and somewhat awkward territory. 

Ahead of the 19th season of Sister Wives in 2024, Robyn admitted that her relationship with Kody had become increasingly strained. “No one should be married while they’re going through a divorce,” Robyn told People. “It’s been hell,” she continues. “There have been times he’s tried to self-sabotage and sabotage us. I’ve had to work hard not to let him.” Kody confirmed his wife’s assessment in the Season 19 premiere of “Sister Wives,” as reported by E! News. “Robyn and I are really, kind of, in a struggling place,” he said. 

“We’re probably doing the worst we’ve ever done in our marriage. It’s been tough between us,” Robyn added in that episode, revealing that Kody had become paranoid that Robyn might soon be following his three ex-wives out the door. “Kody’s feeling a lot of rejection, so I think he’s kind of looking at me going, ‘Are you going to reject me too?'” she noted.

Like Meri and Christine, Janelle moved on with her life after splitting up with Kody. She decided to put some distance between herself and her ex, pulling up stakes and moving to North Carolina, where she joined her daughter, Maddie Brush, and her husband, Caleb Brush. Together, in September 2024, Janelle and her daughter launched Taeda Farms. “We would like to invite you to join us on this wild, messy, and beautiful journey as we build Taeda Farms, our flower farm, from scratch!” Janelle wrote on Facebook. “It’s not always glamorous — there’s a lot of sweat, dirt, and trial and error — but every small step is part of something much bigger. We’re literally creating beauty from the ground up …”

Earlier in the year, Janelle faced any parent’s ultimate heartbreak when she mourned the death of her son, Garrison, whom she shared with Kody. As the Los Angeles Times reported, his death was the result of an apparent suicide. She and Kody addressed the loss in a joint statement that she posted on Instagram. “Kody and I are deeply saddened to announce the loss of our beautiful boy Robert Garrison Brown. He was a bright spot in the lives of all who knew him. His loss will leave such a big hole in our lives that it takes our breath away. We ask that you please respect our privacy and join us in honoring his memory.”

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by dialing 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.