Sister Wives star Mary Brown is revisiting old family wounds and revealing where they began.
In a new teaser clip for the upcoming episode, Meri, 55, admitted she still has unresolved feelings about Janelle Brown join his marriage with Kody Brown – especially after Janelle’s story with her brother Adam Clark Barber. (Janelle, 56, was previously married to Adam from 1988 to 1990 and the now exes were in a monogamous relationship together.)
“There’s a lot of excitement,” Meri said in a preview obtained by people and was published on Thursday, January 22. Kody, 57, and Meri were legally married in April 1990. Janelle was the second wife to join the brood, marrying Kody in spirit in January 1993.
Adding to the complexity of their family dynamic was the fact that Janelle’s mother, Sheryl Usherexchanged vows in a spiritual union with Kody’s father, Winn Brownin October 1992, just three months before his own wedding.
“Well, people don’t, I won’t just say people, I’ll say Kody, Kody and Janelle don’t recognize that possibly some of the problems I had in polygamy could have stemmed from the fact that, oh, they wanted to get married on my birthday,” Meri explained in the clip. “They had planned to get married on my birthday.” (Meri’s birthday is January 16.)
What frustrated her the most was that Janelle and Kody apparently thought “it doesn’t matter, we’ll just celebrate (Meri’s birthday) on a different day.” It wasn’t until Kody’s mom shut down the idea that they decided to change the date, Meri recalls.
Janelle and Kody Brown.
Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images“Like, excuse me? It’s important,” Meri duplicated in the clip. “So we start the marriage relationship, the family relationship, with that. And they forget that there might have been some emotions involved with the fact that she was previously married to my brother”.
Janelle and Meri previously discussed their past connection on the Jan. 4 episode and how they crossed paths. “She had married my brother and was actually at my wedding with him,” Meri noted. “And then they got divorced after Kody and I got married.”
Janelle also reflected on her first marriage in this episode, noting that it “didn’t really matter.”
Sister Wives premiered in 2010 and after more than a decade of ups, downs, trials and tribulations, fans are still fascinated by Kody Brown and his plural family, even if he’s only married to one woman now. In its beginnings, the TLC series followed Kody and his three wives, Meri Brown, Janelle Brown and Christine Brown, (…)
Meri said it was a different experience for her, adding, “It was a hard thing to wrap my head around on a number of levels just because she was married to my brother, you know?”
Janelle became intrigued by the idea of plural marriages when she met Kody’s family, who also practiced polygamy.
“My mom came to save me from polygamists because no daughter of hers was going to marry some crazy cult,” Janelle said on a November 2025 episode of her TLC series. “And she ended up marrying Kody’s dad.”
Janelle and Kody finally broke up, broke up in 2022. He and the third wife Christine Brownwho joined Brown’s brood in 1994, left in 2021. Kody and Meri later split in 2023.
Kody is now only romantically linked to the fourth woman Robyn Brownwhom he married in 2014. The 18-year-old father divorced Meri to legally marry Robyn.