Kody Brown: The Sister Wives Star's Transformation Is Head-Turning

Ever since making its TV premiere in 2010, TLC's "Sister Wives" has been one of the cable channel's most popular shows. When the series debuted, viewers met Kody Brown, a proud polygamist with three wives and plans to marry (not legally, but "spiritually") another. For Brown, bringing reality TV cameras into his home, documenting the daily life of his unconventional family, was part of a larger crusade that he hoped would legitimize plural families like his. "Part of the reason for coming out and is not only gaining acceptance but lowering prejudice," Brown told Variety before the show's debut. "We hope this helps to have all of society understand it."

Over more than a decade, fans of the show have watched raptly as nonstop drama unspooled, cracks forming within the family's foundation that grew larger until ultimately fracturing entirely. By the time the 19th season of "Sister Wives" arrived in the fall of 2024, three of Brown's four wives had left him in rancorously bitter exits, leaving him struggling to keep his marriage to his sole remaining wife from imploding like his others.

Meanwhile, Brown has transformed in the eyes of the public from polygamist patriarch to reality show villain extraordinaire. In fact, the more that fans learn about Kody Brown, the greater their realization that the "Sister Wives" star's transformation is head-turning.

Kody Brown wasn't brought up in a polygamous family. Brown was raised a Mormon; as part of his faith as a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints. After graduating high school, he spent two years as a missionary. As he wrote in the 2012 book, "Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage," it was while he was on his mission that his father, Winn Brown, decided to dive into polygamy by taking a second wife.

When he returned and met his dad's new wife, Brown recalled seeing how harmonious their plural marriage was. It was then that he began to give serious thought to embracing polygamy himself, and it's fair to say that his father's influence is ultimately what led him to "Sister Wives." 

Winn Brown's polygamy is confirmed in his obituary, which states that at the time of his death in 2013, he was survived by three wives: Genielle, Bobbie, and Sheryl. Genielle, Winn's first wife, is Kody's mother. Interestingly, one of Winn's wives, Sheryl, is the mother of Kody's second wife, Janelle. While they're not related by blood, Kody and Janelle are step-siblings, one of the more awkward branches growing from the Brown family tree. 

Writing in "Becoming Sister Wives," Kody Brown recalled the first time he first laid eyes on his future first wife, Meri, in church. "Meri was so cute and sweet when I met her that I had a hard time suppressing my hopelessly romantic nature," he wrote. "I had a sneaking suspicion that we were soulmates ..."

Meri was likewise smitten, as she explained in her book section. "I was a little taken with Kody right off the bat," she wrote. "He was definitely cute and had a great attitude. He was talkative and engaged me in conversation, and made me feel comfortable around him." 

For religious reasons, they abstained from any premarital hanky panky before tying the knot in 1990. Meri — who'd grown up in a polygamist family — entered the marriage with the expectation that she'd eventually be joined by some sister wives. "I had a lot of years with other moms and other siblings that weren't just from my mom," she recalled in an episode of "Sister Wives," as reported by People. "So it wasn't out of the ordinary for me."

After marrying in 1990, Kody Brown and his first wife, Meri Brown, maintained a somewhat traditional monogamous marriage. That, however, didn't last long. Within a few years, he began courting Janelle, who would become his second wife.

At the time, Janelle had recently divorced her first husband. Kody popped the question, and Janelle became his second wife in 1993. While Kody's marriage to Meri was of the legal, license-requiring variety, he and Janelle tied the knot in a "spiritual" ceremony that was not technically legitimate. According to Kody, his first wife was seemingly fully onboard bringing a second wife into the mix. "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."

Interestingly enough, Janelle was in attendance at her husband's first wedding, when he married Meri. That's because the husband she divorced, Adam Clark Barber, is Meri's brother — yet another unusual aspect of the complicated "Sister Wives" family tree.

As viewers of TLC's "Sister Wives" know, Kody Brown is the father of 18 children with his four wives. While Kody and first wife Meri had not been immediately able to have a child, that wasn't the case with his second wife. In 1994, a year after their wedding, Janelle and Kody welcomed son Logan, the first of the six children they would have together. 

During an appearance on the podcast "Reality Life With Kate Casey," Janelle recalled that Kody was a great father — at least initially. "I always thought that he was very present. In fact ... one of the things that I really admired about him is he was very engaged with his kids. He really did love his kids," she said via CheatSheet.

However, as the years passed, she watched how her husband's rapport with all his kids (not just hers) began to change — and not for the better. "As they got older, it was harder for him, I think, to relate to them as adults," Janelle observed. As longtime viewers of "Sister Wives" will recognize, those relationships deteriorated over time, leading to fractured relationships with several of his kids.

Kody Brown had barely settled into his life as a polygamist when he began setting the wheels in motion to bring a third wife into the family to join Meri and Janelle. In fact, he and Janelle were still polygamist newlyweds when he began courting his third wife, Christine Brown. 

Kody and Christine eventually married in 1994, the year after his wedding to Janelle, and the speed at which he was bolstering his ever-growing family was not lost on him. "I was 25, I already had two wives, and Janelle was expecting our first child," he wrote in "Becoming Sister Wives." "The thought of trying to bring Christine into our family gave me serious pause," he continued. "Suddenly, I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders."

Looking back at his wedding during an episode of "Sister Wives," Kody recalled how little he'd enjoyed the experience due to the crushing stress he was feeling during his wedding. "I had a thousand-yard stare, and I wasn't engaged into the experience," he recalled. "It was hard."

During the latter half of the 2000s, Kody Brown was a man on a mission, determined to lessen the stigma of polygamy. One way he attempted to achieve this was by giving interviews to news outlets. One of those interviews happened to catch the eye of Timothy Gibbons, a television producer who was intrigued with the idea of a reality series that documented the day-to-day lives of a polygamist family. When the idea was pitched to him, Brown felt his family would be ideally suited for reality TV, and the show that would become TLC's "Sister Wives" was born.

Brown's wives were also on board with the idea. They felt that opening up their lives to TV viewers would open up some minds about what they perceived to be the positive aspects of polygamy. "We want to tell our story," Janelle Brown explained in an interview with Variety. "We want people to see for themselves and not what they read."

When the premiere episode of "Sister Wives" debuted in September 2010, the show immediately resonated with viewers. Over time, ratings grew, ultimately becoming one of cable television's most-watched shows. Before long, Kody Brown had become synonymous with polygamy, while he and his lives became the unlikeliest of reality TV stars.

When "Sister Wives" first came to television, Kody Brown was courting his fourth wife, Robyn Brown. As viewers watched the process unfold as he integrated Robyn into his plural marriage, they couldn't help but notice a huge twist: for Kody to become legal guardian of Robyn's children from a previous relationship, he needed to legally marry her. That, however, was complicated by his marriages to Janelle and Christine were of the spiritual variety, his marriage to his first wife Meri was legally binding. 

Therefore, to legally marry Robyn, Kody had to divorce Meri — who remained his wife, but now only in the spiritual sense. That led to a particularly emotional episode in which Meri is confronted with divorce papers to sign. "It's an end of something that we had had, in a way, for 24-and-a-half years," she said during that episode, via 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."

The divorce was finalized, and Kody and Robyn walked down the aisle. That moment, in retrospect, came to mark the beginning of "Sister Wives" — and the end of the show as viewers initially knew it.

After that first season, "Sister Wives" documented the seemingly harmonious goings on within the plural marriage of Kody Brown and his four wives. As the series progressed, however, tensions within the family became apparent. The situation hit a breaking point in November 2021 when Christine took to Instagram with a bombshell announcement. "After more than 25 years together, Kody and I have grown apart and I have made the difficult decision to leave," she wrote in that post. "We will continue to be a strong presence in each other's lives as we parent our beautiful children and support our wonderful family."

Christine's exit sent shockwaves through the family, and over a year later, Janelle revealed that she was leaving. After sharing the news with TLC viewers in a special episode of "Sister Wives," she later revealed Christine's exit spurred her to do likewise. Interviewed by People, Janelle admitted that coming to her decision was not easy and took a lot of soul-searching. "But I still felt like I should be loyal out of obligation," she said, explaining how Christine gave her the impetus to follow her lead after leaving Kody. "This burden came off me, and I thought, 'Wow. Okay, it's over,'" Janelle said. "If [Christine] hadn't left, I might've stayed."

Kody Brown was still grappling with the repercussions of two of his four wives fleeing when Meri dropped a revelation of her own. "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 announced in an Instagram post. Despite what some would assume, Meri insisted she held no ill will toward her ex. "But for now, know that there is peace in my heart, and I hold no animosity toward Kody," she added, pointing out that ending her relationship was not cause for celebration. "Please try to refrain from congratulating me at the break up of my marriage," she wrote. 

She had much more to say in front of the camera. "I know it's not fair for me to be alone like I have been for years," Meri said in a subsequent episode (via ET Online). "I really feel like I was emotionally abandoned by him many, many years ago ..." In that same episode, Kody admitted that watching three of his four wives walk out on him within 14 months placed him and his fourth (and now only) wife, Robyn, in unfamiliar terrain. "Robyn came into our family specifically because she intended to live plural marriage," he said. "This appears to be the end of our plural marriage."

Due to infertility issues, Meri was only able to have one child with Kody Brown. That child grew up and, like Meri, utilized social media to reveal that they'd come out as transgender. As they wrote in an Instagram post, "my name is Leon and my pronouns are they/them."

Meri has publicly supported Leon in his journey, which was evident in a post she made via Instagram Stories in celebration of International Transgender Day of Visibility. "I see you! I love you! I got you!" Meri wrote in that post (as reported by People), adding, "Protect trans kids."

Kody, on the other hand, has displayed far less tolerance for Leon's coming out. "He does not support Leon's transition at all," a source told The Sun. "He's actually disgusted by it, as terrible as that is." According to that source, Kody's alleged reaction to Leon's transition was one of disbelief and rejection. "Kody is telling close friends, 'This is a new person. I don't know who this person is, but this is not the little girl that I raised,'" the source added.

For Kody Brown, his transition from America's most notorious polygamist to a cranky monogamist with just one wife was not an easy one. The same held true for Robyn, who, as Kody's sole remaining sister wife, was forced to bear the brunt of what he was going through emotionally. "No one should be married while they're going through a divorce," Robyn said in an August 2023 interview with People, commenting on the state of their relationship. "It's been hell," she added, admitting that she'd witnessed Kody attempting to sabotage their relationship. "I've had to work hard not to let him." 

In the Season 19 premiere of "Sister Wives," Kody confirmed that he and Robyn were going through a difficult period. "Robyn and I are really, kind of, in a struggling place," he said, as reported by E! News. "We're probably doing the worst we've ever done in our marriage. It's been tough between us," Robyn said in that same episode.

In fact, Robin observed that Kody was still deeply stung by having three women walk out on him within such a compacted timeframe, which escalated fears about his final remaining spouse. "Kody's feeling a lot of rejection," Robyn explained, "so I think he's kind of looking at me going, 'Are you going to reject me too?'" 

Kody Brown is no stranger to tragedy, but he experienced arguably the biggest loss in his life when his son, Garrison, whom she shared with ex-wife Janelle, died. He was just 25 years old. "Janelle and I are deeply saddened to announce the loss of our beautiful boy Robert Garrison Brown," Kody wrote in an Instagram post featuring a photo of his late son. "He was a bright spot in the lives of all who knew him," he continued. "Our loss will leave such a big hole in our lives, that it takes our breath away."

According to the Los Angeles Times, authorities suspected that he'd taken his own life. "It is with great sadness I confirm Mr. Robert Garrison Brown was located in his residence deceased, as a result of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound," Sgt. J.L. Rintala of the Flagstaff Police Department said in a statement to the Times.

Subsequently interviewed by People, Kody admitted that he regretted not spending more time with Garrison. "I want to go out to dinner again. I want to sit down. I want to have a beer," Kody said. "I want [Garrison] to try and make me laugh because he was that way. The only regret is just, gosh, I would just do that more often."

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.

Despite transforming from polygamist to boring monogamist, controversy continued to cling to Kody Brown. That was evident as a group of fed-up "Sister Wives" fans banded together to demand that he be fired from the show by launching a petition on Change.org.

"Kody Brown has shown the audience this season how abundantly abusive he is to his family," the petition declared. "We cannot stand to watch this man get paid for showcasing his actions and treatment towards his wife's [sic] and children," the petition continued, stating that unless Kody was given the boot by TLC, they would no longer watch "Sister Wives."

To be fair — who are they kidding? That petition had garnered a measly 727 signatures as of November 2024. Meanwhile, the show was still averaging about 1.2 million viewers each week, retaining its status as TLC's most-watched show. It doesn't take a psychic to predict that, petition or not, Brown is unlikely to be bounced so long as "Sister Wives" continues to rake in such hefty ratings.