Janelle Brown is done playing nice with her ex-husband Kody Brown and his wife, Robyn Brown — and that’s OK.
“I can still be very friendly with Kody. I never really had much of a relationship with Robyn,” Janelle, 56, confessed during part 2 of the Sister Wives: One-on-One special, which aired on Sunday, June 1. “I don’t have any hate or hard feelings or anything. I just don’t really want to know them.”
Host Sukanya Krishnan wondered if there were any “specific examples” of why Janelle doesn’t want a friendship with Robyn, 46, but she couldn’t think of any.
“I could sit and talk to them. That would be fine. If it was all superficial. I would be fine if we, you know, I would talk to them. That’s no big deal,” Janelle explained. “I’m just not going to be buddies with them or, like, go to lunch with them.”
When pushed about “why” she couldn’t have a relationship with Kody, 56, and Robyn, Janelle said she was just done. “I don’t need it. I don’t want it. I’m not looking for it,” Janelle revealed, insisting that there wasn’t a lack of trust, but more a difference of personalities.
Janelle added, “I really just don’t like them. I don’t want to know them. I don’t want to be friends with them. I just don’t like them.”
As far as future interactions, Janelle said she doesn’t “like” Kody and Robyn “in that setting” together and in forced circumstances. “I just don’t like them. I don’t want to be friends with them,” she concluded.
Janelle and Kody had a spiritual wedding in 1993, three years after he legally wed first wife Meri Brown. In 1994, the plural family added Christine Brown into the fold. Robyn joined the group in 2010 but it wasn’t until 2014 that she legally married Kody following his divorce from Meri, 54.
After Kody and Robyn tied the knot — and he legally adopted her three children from a prior marriage — he and Meri stayed in a spiritual union for nearly a decade. However, Kody’s relationships with his first three wives have since fallen apart.
Christine, who shares six kids with Kody, announced their split in November 2021. Janelle, who also welcomed six kids during her marriage, confirmed her own separation from Kody in December 2022. Meri, who shares one child with Kody, revealed in January 2023 that they too had parted ways.
While Janelle and Kody came together in March 2024 — after the death of their son Garrison Brown — during the one-on-one special, she made it clear they are not close. (Garrison died by suicide at the age of 25.)
“I don’t ever remember him being this mean. Never. He never was this mean. I’ve never seen him be so mean,” Janelle told Krishnan on Sunday’s episode, pointing to Kody “rewriting” history and “trying to hurt people” as out of character for the man she married.
“I feel like it’s a smokescreen,” Janelle said of Kody’s actions following his three divorces. Janelle also claimed that Kody was changing the past to “focus on himself” and not on Robyn’s alleged mistakes to protect her.
Janelle explained, “I feel like a lot of people want to pin the blame on Robyn. And I don’t think that she is necessarily innocent in this. I mean, it takes two. In a lot of ways, he’s made himself even more villainous, I guess to kind of take away some of the blame from her.”
Looking back at their time together, Janelle said that it’s “really dangerous” to compare their lives now to the start of the plural family more than two decades ago.
“It’s really hard to compare who we were then and how our relationships developed with who this [Kody] 2.0 that gets to marry Robyn,” Janelle said, reminding viewers that when they started their family they had “very little money” and “personality” conflicts.
Janelle quipped, “Well, hell, if I was marrying someone like Kody right now, it’d probably be very different with all of his history and perspective and everything. It’d be a very different relationship.”
Episode 3 of the Sister Wives: One-on-One special airs on TLC Sunday, June 8, at 10 p.m. ET.
