Meri Brown already knows how she will tell a stranger she likes him: take a bead from her pouch, drop it into his, and touch his chest. That is the ritual at the tantra-yoga speed-dating event she walked into in San Francisco — an event she once called “really, really, really super inappropriate.” TLC froze on that walk-in as the November 8 episode ended — and the fandom split clean in two.
The Bead, the Pouch, and the Touch on the Chest
She told her sister Rebekah she had already tried the same format in Salt Lake City, where women signal interest by moving a bead into a man’s pouch and touching his chest. Rebekah’s reaction was a stunned whisper: “What are you doing?” Meri explained the fear: “When I think of tantra yoga, I think of very sexualized yoga, and positions and closeness.” Then the line that broke the tension: “This is why the men don’t do it, because women have boobies and that would be awkward.” Meri went in anyway.
From a Life in the Shadows to a Room Full of Strangers
Rewind the tape. Meri married Kody at 19, signed the legal divorce in 2014 so he could marry Robyn, then stayed nine more years — “a little bit stubborn and just stuck around,” she admitted — before their 36-year story finally ended in January 2023. She barely dated before that marriage — her church treated dating as a path to the altar — and she spent her childhood hiding: homeschooling in 1970s Utah, then polygamy. “I feel like I’ve spent so much of my life in the shadows,” she said. So the woman walking into a room full of strangers in San Francisco — her birthplace, home until age 5 — is doing, at 55, what she was never allowed to do at 19.
Team Cheer: Finally, Her Turn to Choose
Half the fandom is applauding. Meri says she loves speed dating because she is passionate about connecting with people — a woman finally choosing her own pace: “I just think that moving slow can be wise,” she said. The DMs agree: she told cameras she gets proposed to by strangers “on a weekly basis.” Proof the format can work: last year she met her friend Ron at a speed-dating event, and the two are now “comfortable in the friend zone.” For Team Cheer, that same stubbornness is now pushing her forward.
Team Worry: Serial Speed Dating, or a Show in the Making?
The other half is not clapping. One Reddit viewer joked, “Meri’s just speed dating around the world,” while another questioned “the draw of serial speed dating.” Some fans wonder whether the appearances tie into a business idea or a show production. The November 15 preview is not calming anyone down: the listing teases “uncomfortable hugging” and says Meri meets a man she connected with at speed dating. The worry is not the dating — it is the cameras finding her at the exact moment dating gets weirdest. Sunday will show whether that concern is fair — see the November 15 episode preview.
The Place-or-Person Puzzle
Underneath the bead pouches sits a bigger question: where does her next life happen? She flew to San Francisco to test her birthplace as a future home, then admitted the city felt “a little bit chaotic.” “Maybe I’ll meet somebody in a place that is really settled in a place and I will like the place. Or maybe I’ll find my place and get settled and then meet my person,” she said. She would also move to be with the right man — a stance that has already split fans over a possible San Francisco move. Dating, she admits, is strange either way: “It is so weird.”
YOU MAY LIKEMykelti’s Truth Bomb: Are You Watching Sister Wives for the Moms — or to Yell at Kody?So Sunday night settles half the argument: if the man from the bead pouch becomes a real second date, the awkward gamble paid off. If it fizzles, the worry camp will say she should have stayed in Utah. Which side are you on — is Meri brave for walking into that room, or is tantra speed dating one awkward step too far?
