Before Janelle Brown and Meri Brown ever shared a husband, they already shared a family. That is the part fans are digging back up this week.
First, some honesty: this is not breaking news. The story comes from the Sister Wives episode that aired on January 4, and it was resurfaced on October 29, 2026, when TheThings revisited the moment Janelle and Meri said it out loud. It is worth retelling properly, though — because the two women remember the same past very differently.
The Timeline, Piece by Piece
Long before Kody Brown, Janelle was married to Meri’s brother, Adam Barber. Janelle has said she met Adam in her senior year of high school and married him about a year to a year and a half after graduating. She calls the marriage “very short” — less than a year, with perhaps six months living together.
A note on the record: some retellings, including TheThings, describe the marriage as lasting two years, from 1988 to a 1990 divorce. Where accounts differ, this article follows Janelle’s own account, as reported by People: less than a year. The key sequence is not in dispute: Meri legally married Kody in 1990, and Janelle spiritually married Kody in 1993.
Janelle says she stayed friendly with Meri and Kody after her divorce, even double-dating with them, before her growing interest in their faith brought her into the family.
Meri’s Side: It Was Definitely a Thing for Me
Meri has never pretended this was easy to accept. Sitting with Janelle, she put it plainly: “Janelle and I were actually sisters-in-law before we were sister wives.” She added, “She’d been married to my brother and she was actually at my wedding with him.”
YOU MAY LIKEMykelti’s Truth Bomb: Are You Watching Sister Wives for the Moms — or to Yell at Kody?When talk began about Janelle joining the family, Meri admitted, “it was really hard for me” — “a tough thing to wrap my head around,” she said, “just because she had been married to my brother.” Her conclusion: “it was definitely a thing for me, for sure.”
Janelle’s Side: It Wasn’t Really a Thing
Janelle sees the same chapter and shrugs. She has called her first marriage something that “just didn’t take,” and said the whole period “wasn’t really a thing” and “didn’t really matter” — “such a small period of time.”
That is not rewriting history; it is weighing it differently. A marriage lasting months, ending years before she married Kody, simply does not carry the same weight for her as for Meri. She has also said she does not regret the life that followed, and would do it all again for her family and children with Kody.
So the disagreement was never really about dates. It was about what a short, long-ago marriage is allowed to mean — and who gets to decide that.
Does the Past Change How You See Their Feud?
Here is the question fans are now arguing over. Knowing Meri had to make room in her marriage for her brother’s ex-wife, does Meri earn more sympathy? Or does Janelle have the stronger point — that a brief chapter from before either woman married Kody should not have shadowed them for 30 years?
There is no clean answer — which is why this story keeps resurfacing. Meri’s feelings were real, and Janelle’s perspective was honest. Both can be true at once.
So pick a side: was Meri right that this past could never just be “not a thing” — or was Janelle right that a short chapter, long closed, should have stayed closed? Drop your verdict in the comments.
