Sister Wives’ Meri Brown Admits Janelle’s Past Marriage to Her Brother Affected Her ‘Emotions’

Meri Brown had many feelings about Janelle Brown entering her union with Kody Brown, since Janelle was previously married to Meri’s brother, Adam Barber.

In a sneak peek obtained by People for the upcoming episode of the Sister Wives “One-on-One” special, Meri, 55, shared a few of the reasons her plural marriage with Janelle, 56, and Kody, 57, didn’t start off on the right foot.

“Kody and Janelle fail to recognize that possibly some of the issues that I had in polygamy could have stemmed from the fact that, oh, they wanted to get married on my birthday,” Meri shared. “They had planned to get married on my birthday.”

Meri explained that Kody’s mom put a stop to that idea, but that initially the family patriarch and Janelle thought “it doesn’t matter, we’ll just celebrate it a different day.”

“Like, excuse me? It does matter,” Meri remarked. “So let’s 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 used to be married to my brother,” Meri continued. “There’s a lot of emotion. There is a lot of emotion!”

Janelle and Barber tied the knot in 1988 and divorced in 1990. Meanwhile, Kody wed Meri in 1990 before spiritually marrying Janelle three years later in 1993.

In an episode of Sister Wives that aired earlier this month, Meri admitted, “When the conversation about Janelle coming into our family started happening, it was really hard for me.”

“It was a tough thing to wrap my head around on multiple levels just because she had been married to my brother, you know?” she added, according to People. “And so it was definitely a thing for me, for sure.”

As for Janelle, she discussed her brief marriage to Barber in a November 2024 appearance on the Reality Life with Kate Casey podcast.

“It was very, very short-lived,” Janelle said. “I think we might have lived together physically, actually lived together, for like six months.”