Kody Brown is opening up about a time he felt betrayed by his ex-wives Christine and Janelle.
During TLC’s Sister Wives: One on One special, the family patriarch sat down with host Sukanya “Suki” Krishnan to unpack the upsetting memory of his exes traveling while he was sick.
During the special, Kody tells Krishnan, “Just before Christmas, we talked about Thanksgiving stuff, and I had just had COVID. Janelle was on vacation with Christine when I got COVID. And it was pretty dark. It felt like such a betrayal.”
Viewers have watched the trio’s complicated relationship unfold over the past 18 seasons of TLC’s Sister Wives, which shares an inside look at the Brown family as they navigate plural marriage and manage blended households.
Krishnan clarifies that the reason Kody felt betrayed was because Christine and Janelle were together, to which he responds, “Yeah, when I was sick.”
Janelle and Christine then sit down with Krishnan to explain their side of the story.
“So I was on vacation,” Janelle says. “Kody called me at the hotel and he’s like, ‘I’m really sick,’ and I was getting ready to call Christine and say we got to go home. So I called the doctor because he [Kody] was freaking me out. He was really scaring me.”
She adds that while she did consider rushing home, the doctor told her not to because “you can’t come over to the house anyway. There’s nothing you can do.”
Meanwhile, Christine recalls Kody reaching out to Janelle while they were on vacation.
“There we are, having a lovely time together, and he goes, ‘I need you to come home so you can get some stuff for me,’” she says. She also revealed the advice she gave to Janelle after telling her she shouldn’t leave their trip to rush back to Kody.
“All you’re going to do is go to the store and buy it for him, and then take it to his house and leave it on the doorstep,” she told her former sister wife at the time. “You will never see him. You can’t take care of him, and straight up, when you had COVID, did he take care of you? No.”
Christine and Kody’s relationship has hit a few rough patches since announcing their split in Nov. 2021 after being “spiritually married” for 25 years. She has since found love again and officially tied the knot with her now-husband David Woolley in a large Utah ceremony in October.
Despite her shocking split from Kody, Christine has remained close with Janelle, who confirmed her separation from the family patriarch a year after Christine in Dec. 2022. A few days after the news of Kody and Janelle’s split, Kody’s 32-year marriage with his first wife Meri was also over.
Meri was the only wife who was legally married to Kody until 2014 when he divorced her to marry his current wife Robyn. While Robyn is Kody’s only remaining wife, she still questions their relationship and where it’s headed. Between his former and current wives, Kody is a father to 18 children in total.