The Brown dynasty encompasses 16 children whose ages range from 16 to under one year. In season two of “Sister Wives,” they go to public school for the first time after having been homeschooled. (
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At first glance, TLC’s “Sister Wives” creeps you out. After all, the series explores a family dynamic so outside the norm that it not only flouts convention, it seems downright perverse. Four women are “married” to one man, shaggy-haired Mormon stud Kody Brown, and among them they have 16 children. Like many families, they have breakfast, go off to school, play games together — but something seems wrong.
Everyone buys into the situation. The wives, who think their relationship is “faith based,” and the kids, who have nicknamed themselves “plygets.” At home, they are ready to take on all comers, whether it’s “Today” co-host Meredith Vieira or the authorities. As they leave their home in Lehi, Utah, for their television appeaerance, Brown declares, “To be transparent makes us more safe. Eventually we can become an open community.” But when facing Vieira on live television in a New York studio, he freezes up. Outside of his comfort zone, the explanations don’t come so easily.
Brown, himself raised in a polygamous home, seems like a regular guy who loves his family. He goes to work in advertising sales every day, and he wants his children to grow up in a safe, loving environment.
He legally married first wife Meri in 1990 when she was 19 and he was 22. They have one child, Mariah, who is 14. Meri has struggled with fertility issues ever since and has not had more children.
He “married” second wife, Janelle, a mutual friend of the couple, in 1993. Unlike Meri, Janelle bore six children: Logan, 16; Madison, 14; Hunter, 13; Garrison, 12; Gabriel, 8; and Savanah, 5.
A third wife, Christine, came along just a year later. Christine, too, turned out to be quite fertile, and also has had six children: Aspyn, 14; Mykelti, 13; Paedon, 11; Gwenelyn, 8; Ysabel, 6; and baby Truely, who is just a few months old.
Finally, while producers were shooting “Sister Wives,” Brown took his fourth wife, Robyn, whom he and Meri met at a party. Meri immediately liked the divorced mother of three, and although Brown says he was initially reluctant to marry her, Robyn ultimately became wife number four last year.
Besides his union with Meri, none of Brown’s partnerships come with legal documentation, although the state of Utah, where the Browns lived until very recently, considers such situations common-law marriages and thus problematic under the state’s bigamy laws.
The Browns participated in “Sister Wives” because they wanted to come out of hiding, says Howard Lee, TLC’s senior vice president of production and an executive producer on the show.
“The family had a great friendship with the show’s producers,” says Lee. “They encouraged [the Browns] to tell their story.”
Coming out hasn’t been easy. Season two launches with Kody, Meri, Janelle, Christine and Robyn preparing to head to New York to do an interview on NBC’s “Today.” The family is understandably nervous — they want to go public but they don’t know where it’s going to lead.
Where it leads rapidly becomes clear: the day after they return paparazzi are camped at their front yard, the State of Utah launches its investigation into felony bigamy — the state has not prosecuted anyone for this crime since 2001 — and ultimately, as season two will reveal, the family moves to Nevada.
While polygamy certainly isn’t for most people, viewers quickly stop thinking about how foreign the arrangement seems and start thinking how much the Brown family seems like anyone else.
“Viewers have been fascinated by the Browns and their story,” says Lee. “Once you get past the plural marriage, the show is about the same every day concerns and problems that everyone has.”
There are plenty of comments from outraged viewers on TLC’s Web site, though.
“I cannot believe that you are paying this people and glorifying an illeagal [sic] way of life! I think you should be ashamed to present it as family fare,” says one commenter.
TLC’s Lee says the channel is just telling the family’s story and leaving up to the audience to decide. “I think it makes you question what we all consider to be normal or right versus the way other people want to lead their lives. Who are we to judge?”
SISTER WIVES
Today, 9 p.m., TLC