'Sister Wives' Stars Meri and Kody Brown Are Still Married According to the Mormon Church

If you've watched Sister Wives from the beginning, the last few seasons of the TLC hit might look like an utterly different show. At the start of the series, Kody Brown and his wives, Meri Brown, Janelle Brown, Christine Brown, and Robyn Brown, openly shared their lives as a plural family, raising their children under the guise of the Mormon faith. However, soon after the family moved to Flagstaff, Ariz., three of Kody's marriages sadly fell apart.

In Season 19, the Browns are navigating their new realities, as Meri, Janelle, and Christine are no longer married to Kody. The season premiere showed Meri wrestling with her still being spiritually married to Kody despite them being divorced and no longer living as a married couple. As she explained on the show, a Mormon divorce is equally as complicated as a Mormon marriage.

Season 19 of Sister Wives was filmed in late 2022 and picks up where the previous season left off. In the season finale, Meri bravely ends her and Kody's marriage and moves to Utah from Flagstaff, where he and his current only wife, Robyn, live. While discussing the split in the Season 19 premiere, she said that although she and Kody legally divorced years before their relationship became rocky, they're still spiritually married.

"We still have that marriage intact, and now I will be moving forward with having that terminated," Meri said. "But that’s gonna take some time."

According to PBS.org, civil divorce doesn't equate to a temple unsealing, which means a couple is divorced, and their marriage is no longer acknowledged in Mormonism. Kody and Meri divorced in December 2014, though they were on good terms then. They ended their legal marriage so Kody could marry Robyn and adopt her kids.

Meri and Kody's spiritual ended after he found out she was talking to another man online, who turned out to be a woman catfishing her. The couple has been separated ever since, but in the eyes of Mormonism, they are still legally married and "must receive a cancellation of sealing, which requires approval from high-ranking church officials," per PBS. Meri also must be unsealed by Kody if she ever wants to get remarried, though he is free to marry anyone else if he chooses.

"A Mormon woman must receive a cancellation of sealing prior to remarrying if she wishes her next marriage to be sealed in the temple," the article explained. "However, because men are permitted to be sealed to more than one woman, they do not have to cancel a previous sealing in order to remarry in the temple."

In a Season 18 episode of Sister Wives, Robyn echoed the Mormon beliefs when she discussed Kody and Christine's split. Christine was the first to leave Kody in 2021 and shared the news with her fans via Instagram. She also implied that her and Kody's marriage wasn't real because it was never legal, and she could leave at any time. Christine's comments insulted Robyn, who said her former sister wife was "invalidating our beliefs" by not going through the proper channels to get divorced.

"Christine, just saying she's divorced is sort of invalidating our beliefs," she said in a confessional. "We are spiritually married to Kody by our church. If we want a divorce then we have to go get their approval."

Robyn also said that, as far as she knew, Christine wasn't divorced until she consummated her relationship with another man.

"Usually, they require counseling, lots and lots of meetings," she added. "And technically, from my understanding, until Christine is physical with another man, she's not divorced. But I don't know."

Soon after leaving Kody, she met her second husband, David Woolley. The pair married in October 2023. Meri also moved on and briefly dated a man named Amos before confirming their split in February 2024.