‘Sister Wives’ Star, Kody Brown, Might Have Subtly Revealed 1 of Meri Brown and Janelle Brown’s Big Issues

The breakdown of Christine and Kody Brown’s marriage may be the main focus of season 17 of Sister Wives, but their marriage isn’t the only relationship that seems completely irretrievable. Things are pretty tense between most of the sister wives, too, but that’s nothing new. Meri Brown and Janelle Brown’s tense relationship has been touched on multiple times since TLC started filming the Brown family. Kody Brown might have inadvertently spilled the beans on where the problem between his first and second wife really began for the very first time. 

Kody Brown reveals that Janelle Brown doesn’t have positive feelings about her ex-husband 

In the season 17 premiere of Sister Wives, Kody rejected Christine’s notion that they could be friends after dissolving their spiritual marriage. Kody, during a confessional, stated that two of his wives were divorced, and he knew how it all played out. Based on Robyn Brown and Janelle’s feelings and actions regarding their ex-husbands, Kody feared Christine would badmouth him.

Bitterness and resentment are not uncommon when a marriage ends, but Kody’s statements seem to indicate that both Janelle and Robyn have spoken openly to their second husband about their negative feelings about their first. Again, that would be fine if the man Janelle is talking about weren’t Meri Brown’s brother. 

Before marrying Kody Brown, Janelle was briefly married to Adam Barber, one of Meri’s brothers. The couple’s marriage lasted just a couple of years. The couple had no children together. Janelle’s connection to Adam is how she first met Meri and, then later, how she was introduced to Kody. 

Meri, for all intents and purposes, came from a close-knit family. The Barber family is how Janelle was even introduced to Kody in the first place. Even now, Meri maintains a relationship with her brother. He was on hand with Meri when she closed on her bed and breakfast in Utah. The idea of your brother’s ex marrying your husband has to make you squeamish but to have that same person badmouthing your sibling to the husband you share seems almost unbearably uncomfortable. The Browns have largely avoided speaking about Adam and Janelle’s marriage, but Kody’s recent slip suggests not all was amicable.

There is surely more to the story of Meri and Janelle Brown’s mutual dislike 

While Janelle’s less-than-fuzzy feelings about Meri’s brother are probably part of the problem, it is far from their only issue. Both Kody and Janelle have been pretty sketchy about how their early relationship began. Still, the timeline for Janelle’s divorce and how she spoke about her first meeting with Kody in the family’s memoir, Becoming Sister Wives, doesn’t sit well with some.

While polygamists enter marriage with the intention of a man taking more than one wife, Janelle and Kody’s early romance felt slightly more clandestine than the Browns said the process was. Several slights appeared to have followed. Janelle and Kody initially planned to marry on Meri’s birthday. Meri and Janelle Brown have admitted that early life inside the Brown home was pretty unsettling. 

Later, Meri’s desire to keep Janelle’s children from walking through her home to make their way to a different apartment led to drama. Once the family left Lehi and moved to Las Vegas, Meri and Janelle Brown seemed settled into quiet distaste. That relationship only became frostier after Meri and Kody became estranged.