Perhaps Meri Brown and former sister wife Robyn Brown's love wasn't meant to be divided. However, as Meri revealed during the fourth and final part of Sister Wives' One-on-One special on February 1st, she and her former best friend aren't exactly swapping secrets anymore. "She and I had a good relationship, everybody saw it," Meri detailed to host Sukanya Krishnan. "But, you know, that just kind of over the years, disintegrated. There was a lack of trust."
Specifically, "I would have conversations with her," Meri continued. And while she assumed those talks held a certain amount of privacy, "Other people would find out." This was most apparent to the 55-year-old when she embarked on a virtual flirtation with an Internet stranger in 2015. At the time, the mother of 30-year-old Leon was looking for a bit of attention. Instead, as she later discovered, she became entangled in a catfishing scandal, with her online pen pal—an Oklahoma-based woman named Jackie—eventually "coming after me," Meri detailed, "and kind of coming after us, like, us as a family."
With the whole family—including Kody's then-second and third wives Janelle Brown and Christine Brown—living on their Las Vegas cul-de-sac at the time, "Robyn would come over and talk to me about it," Meri shared. "And I would tell her what's going on. But then other stuff would happen and other stories would be out there."
In Meri's view, those conversations became bait for her online paramour-turned-enemy. "There were times that I would have a conversation with Robyn that the catfisher would find out about," said Meri, noting that Robyn and Jackie shared a friend. "I don't believe that she did it intentionally to hurt me. I think she did it to try to help the situation, but she kept making it worse."
But Robyn insisted she was the only one of Meri's sister wives working to improve the situation. "All I know is that she was having a conversation online about flowers and texting and music and flirting," the mother of five recounted. And hearing that, said Robyn, had her pushing Kody in Meri's direction. "I was like, 'She is struggling, get your butt over there. Figure this out with her,'" she noted. "That's what I was doing, OK?"
So, she took extreme offense to Meri suggesting she wasn't there for her. "She's sitting there saying that she can't trust me because of this or that, the other," Robyn marveled. "I had her freaking back, OK? I was sitting there watching everything that was happening and I was worried about her."
That fear led her to have a come to Jesus moment with Kody. "I was saying, 'She kicked you out? You go stay in another room. You have the conversation with her. You don't come over here. You go work it out with her. She's being taken advantage of,'" Robyn recounted of her chat with Kody. "I was like, 'You get your butt over there and you talk to her. You work this out.'"
Similarly, Robyn stressed that she was questioning Meri about her choices. "I was talking to her: 'What is this? What is this conversation you're having? Why are you talking to this person?'" Robyn recalled. "I was being open with both of them." Years later, she noted that she has nothing to hide. "If she wants to say somehow I did something wrong there, that is fine," Robyn insisted. "I don't have a problem with that because I know what my intentions were."
