'Sister Wives' star Meri Brown says 'I don't have a husband' and reveals that Kody told her they could be 'friends' but 'that's all'
- "Am I a sister wife when I don't have a husband?" Meri Brown asks in a new "Sister Wives" preview.
- According to Meri, Kody told her that they could be "friends" but "that's all."
"Sister Wives" star Meri Brown opens up about the status of her marriage in a new clip debuted by Us Weekly.
Meri, who is Kody Brown's first of four wives, has a heart-to-heart with fellow wife Robyn in Sunday's upcoming new episode of the show. Robyn, who is Kody's fourth wife, vents about her mom labeling her "the Brown family scapegoat" when Meri says, "At least you're part of the Brown family."
"No, I don't feel like I'm part of the family," Meri adds in a solo interview. "It's this weird thing. Am I a sister wife when I don't have a husband?"
Kody and Meri met in 1989 and married in 1990. They share one child together, a daughter named Mariah who was born in 1995.
The couple has opened up on "Sister Wives" about their experiences with infertility and miscarriages after having their only child. Meri miscarried her second pregnancy in 2007.
Though they've been through heartbreak, Kody and Meri's relationship remained strong, even in 2014 when they got legally divorced so that Kody could marry Robyn in order to legally adopt Robyn's kids from a previous marriage.
But by 2015, Meri famously got entangled in a catfishing scandal that her marriage never seems to have fully recovered from. As reported by InTouch, Meri met someone named "Sam" on Twitter in March of that year and began publicly flirting with them.
After the online relationship progressed from social-media exchanges to phone calls, Meri discovered "Sam" was actually a woman named Jackie Overton, and she ended the relationship.
In response, "Sam" publicly exposed intimate details of their relationship like "images of the TLC personality posing seductively with a banana," per InTouch. Overton also published a book about her communication with Meri titled "Almost Meri'd."
As a result of the scandal, rumors began to fly on social media that Kody and Meri were separating. But despite the strain on their marriage that has been documented on "Sister Wives" since Meri discovered the truth, in December 2020 Meri clarified that she's not leaving her family in an Instagram post.
"Here's my truth. I love him. I love my family. I'm committed. I have 30 years in this. We struggle. We communicate. We repair relationships as the parties involved are willing and able," she captioned a picture of her and Kody.
But based on the preview of Meri and Robyn's conversation from Sunday's episode, Kody does not seem as willing to repair his first marriage. "He told me that we can be friends... and that's all," Meri reveals to Robyn.
While Robyn says Kody makes comments that give her "hope" for his and Meri's marriage, like that he knows he should call Meri or go see her, Meri counters that he doesn't actually act on those words. "It's really nice that he says it to you. It'd be nice if he would follow through and actually call me sometime," she tells Robyn in the clip.
In February 2021, Kody told Us Weekly that he and Meri "have been in a very dark place for a very long time" but that he hoped "some communication heals things."
"Sister Wives" airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on TLC.