Meri Brown is an American media personality known for being the first wife of Kody Brown, both of whom featured on the TLC reality series. Female Sisters. Since the start of the series in 2010, she remained one of the most important members of the series but also of the family before the end of her marriage to Kody in 2014.
Meri Brown Biography (Age)
Meri Brown was born Meri Caroline Barber in California, United States on January 16, 1971, to William James Barber, Jr. and Bronnie Ahlstrom. She was raised in a polygamous household that had many children.
It was in Salt Lake Valley, Utah, that she was raised with her siblings. However, there is no information in the public domain about his upbringing and childhood.
In 2010, Meri and other members of her family launched the reality series Woman Sisters. Since then, she is still part of the series. Through the series, she gained great fame and built a huge fan base across the world.
Family: siblings, spouse and children
According to some sources, Meri’s father has five wives and a good number of children. The Female Sisters star has six siblings. They include Rebecca, Elaine, Deborah and Adam Barber. She also had an older brother, Marc William Barber, born in 1967. In 2015, Marc died aged 47, but before him Meri had lost another brother, Teresa.
When Meri met the man, she would call him later They met through Meri’s sister and, believing they were soul mates, Kody Brown didn’t propose to her until two months later, then they became husband and wife a few months later.
The couple did not have children until 1995, five years after the birth of their daughter, Mariah Lian. By this time, Kody had already married his second wife, Janelle Brown, with whom he had one child, Logan Taylor, born in 1994, as well as his third wife, Christine Ruth Brown, whom he had married in 1994 and had gave birth to the Aspyn family’s second child Kristine, born in 1995, a few months before Mariah.
Mariah Lian remains the only child between Meri Brown and Kody, but the family now has a total of 18 children from four different women.
In 2017, Mariah came out as gay. Due to the family’s Mormon faith, it was quite hard to accept at first, but they worked around it. According to her mother, she hoped her daughter would find a man and eventually have children. Nevertheless, she also accepted Mariah as she is.
Mariah is now in a relationship with Audrey Kriss, whom she met at Westminster College. The couple got engaged in February 2019.
Divorced
In 2014, more than 20 years into their union, Meri Brown and Kody legally divorced. In 2010, Kody married another woman, a much younger Robyn Alice Brown. Even though he had four wives, he was only legally married to one of them, Meri. The remaining wives, he was only “spiritually” married to them.
Therefore, the reason for the divorce was simply said to be because Kody wanted to be legally married to the last woman to join the Browns, Robyn. The idea of being legally married to Robyn was supposed to allow her to get insurance benefits, including for her three children from a previous relationship who have now been adopted into the family.
After the divorce, Meri still remained Kody’s spiritual wife; they said it was just a change in family structure and nothing more. However, it has become apparent that the new arrangement has strained relationships in the family.
Net value
Thanks to the TLC television series, Meri Brown came to fame and fortune. She has an estimated net worth of $400,000. Kody Brown for his part has a net worth of $800,000. Meri, like her husband, made a fortune from Sister Wives, which is in its 12th season. It was revealed that the cast of the show earned between $25,000 and $45,000 per episode.
Since 2016, the California native had also worked as a retailer for Lula Roe fashion. At the same time, she has been running a Bed & Breakfast establishment in Utah since 2017.