Sister Wives Read online

  Meri was so cute and sweet when I met her that I had a hard time suppressing my hopelessly romantic nature. She had a remarkable purity about her. I had a sneaking suspicion that we were soul mates, but because of the promise I had made to myself, I rejected this notion. I was determined to be Meri’s friend until I knew her better and could confirm my suspicion that our destinies were intertwined. I was glad that Meri and I kept finding ourselves spending more and more time together.

  I was excited to be associating with members of Meri’s faith. They had an intensity about religion that I found inspiring. Perhaps because their religion was somewhat countercultural and at odds with certain conventional doctrines, they took no aspect of their belief for granted. They examined their convictions carefully and enthusiastically. The members of this group were fully committed to their ideologies and discussed them at length, both debating and confirming the tenets of their religion. Every day I spent with this group seemed to turn into an impromptu revival with profound discussions of spirituality and religion that I’d been missing in the LDS church. Even though I loved my new group of friends and their congregation, I hadn’t yet determined whether I should join the faith.

  Nevertheless, I kept surrounding myself with people from my parents’ new church. A few weeks after I told Meri that I wasn’t open to dating, I invited her up to my parents’ ranch in Wyoming for Thanksgiving. Meri and I were never far from each other’s side during that trip. Naturally, people began to ask if we were dating. It was pretty clear that we liked each other a whole lot more than just “friends.” I often caught Meri making eyes at me. I didn’t have to ask her how she felt about me—it was written all over her face. I couldn’t stop winking back at her from time to time. It was no longer possible for me to deny that I had strong feelings for Meri. She was sweet and innocent, and a wonderful listener. She validated my existence. We became inseparable.

  At the same time, I thought this wasn’t fair to Meri or me. I didn’t want to lead her on, but I didn’t want to make a mistake either.

  Thanksgiving weekend ended. I had planned to stay with my parents for a few days, so Meri drove back to Utah with some of our friends. This was the first time in weeks that we had been separated for so long. I thought about her constantly while we were apart.

  The house was finally quiet, which is remarkable in my large family. All the guests had returned home, and my younger siblings were in bed. I was sitting at my mom’s kitchen table, eating ice cream with a fork. The kitchen was dark, but light from the living room spilled onto the floor. Again I thought it wasn’t fair to either of us to pretend we were just friends. We were obviously much more than that. I didn’t want to drag this out and hurt Meri or myself in the process.

  I needed God to answer two questions: Should I join the church I was investigating, and should Meri and I get married? After all, I couldn’t marry her without converting, but I wanted to convert because of a spiritual conviction, not because of my love for Meri. I finished my bowl of ice cream and I decided to fast and pray until I knew with deep conviction what path I should follow.

  I went to the bunkhouse on my parents’ property, which is where I slept. I got into bed and began my fast. After two days of fasting, I decided to drive back down to Utah. Meri’s parents had invited me to stay in a guest room at their home. I hadn’t eaten since Meri left Wyoming, and I was shocked by how great I felt. I was strong and energetic, as if I were being sustained by a greater power throughout my fast. I felt as if this remarkable strength that persisted without food or water was part of my answer.

  When I got to the guest bedroom, I was overcome with an overwhelming feeling of peace, greater than anything I’d experienced before. That feeling, that unbelievable sense of tranquillity and calm, was exactly what I’d been searching for. I had made my decision and I was at peace with it. That very day, I told Meri’s dad that I had decided to join his faith. He made the arrangements quickly. The next weekend I was baptized, and I committed myself to the principle of celestial plural marriage and to God the Almighty. Somehow, in the middle of all of this, I remembered to ask Meri’s father for his permission to court his daughter. I guess my conversion really cast me in a favorable light, because he granted it immediately.

  After the baptism, Meri and I went to Temple Square outside the LDS temple in Salt Lake City to meet up with friends. I had my answer about both my faith and about Meri. I knew that I wanted to marry her, and I just had a feeling that she would say yes if I asked. But as usual, I was moving too quickly and following my romantic impulses. We hadn’t even started courting, but I was already kneeling at the altar.

  That night in Temple Square I was wearing an old trench coat from my mission. I turned to Meri and said, “Your hands look cold.” Then I took one of them in mine and I put our hands into the pocket of my coat. I didn’t want to attract anyone’s notice, but I wanted to hold her hand. I had finally become comfortable with our romance, because now I knew this was the woman I was going to marry.

  Meri

  Even though Kody had told me that he didn’t want to date anyone, I still hoped that he would change his mind. When he finally approached my father about wanting to court me, I was thrilled. Kody and I had a wonderful courtship. The fact that we had spent so much time as friends, and knew each other so well, allowed us to develop a sweet, romantic relationship based upon friendship and mutual respect.

  Kody and I decided to spend Christmas with his family at their ranch in Wyoming. It had been three years since he had spent Christmas there and I was looking forward to getting to know his family a little better. We had been courting for a month, but we had been hanging out for longer than that. It was impossible for us to hide the depth of our feelings for each other. Everyone knew we were in love.

  At dinner, a few days before Christmas Eve, his family kept nagging us about our relationship. They all wanted to know, “When are you guys getting married?” They asked me over and over again.

  Finally I shot back with, “Well, he hasn’t even asked me yet,” more to tease Kody than anything else—and maybe to light a little fire under him.

  That night after dinner, when we were sitting in the bunkhouse, Kody asked in a nervous—but cute!—way, “I’m thinking maybe we ought to get married, you know, if you want to.”

  It was an awkward moment, not at all the romantic proposal girls dream of. Although I did want to marry him, I was hoping for a real proposal—and there was something else holding me back.

  I wanted to take some time for introspection, to know from God if this was the right choice for me. During this time that I was taking to check my feelings and validate them with God, Kody and I went ring shopping. We found a ring we both really liked, but we kept looking just to be sure. Kody knew this was the ring for us, though, so while I thought we were still shopping, he secretly had his sister buy it for him.

  On Christmas Eve, Kody officially asked me to marry him. He was really nervous. He sounded shy and embarrassed and not at all like his usual self when he asked me to marry him this time. He handed me the jewelry box without opening it or taking the ring out, almost as if he was delivering a package. I thought it was sweet how nervous and unpracticed he was.

  “You’re supposed to take the ring out and present it to me, not just hand me the box,” I told him. But I was just giving him a hard time. I was thrilled that Kody had asked me to be his wife. I was completely in love with him. I knew he was my soul mate, and that we were destined for each other. We had a strong foundation of friendship to build on. I was so excited to finally be engaged to him, and looking forward to becoming his wife.

  In true Kody Brown fashion, he had once again jumped way ahead of himself. He’d asked me to marry him before he’d received consent from my father. The next day, Kody called my dad. The two of them had developed a deep friendship based on faith, spirituality, and understanding, so my dad gave us permission at once.

  Kody

  I loved Meri. I was certain
of it. But I was worried. In every one of my past infatuations, I had been able to explore the possibility of a chemical connection through a kiss. I hadn’t done this with Meri, however, simply because it was not appropriate by the standards of my new faith—and because I was waiting for the appropriate time. When we started our courtship, I promised myself I wouldn’t kiss her until we were engaged. This strict abstinence made our relationship and our commitment to each other more powerful and meaningful. This was no simple infatuation. It was love that had been established without the complications of physicality, which makes it spiritual above all else.

  During the first week of our engagement, between Christmas and New Year’s, we met with the head of our church to get his approval so that we could get married. He gladly granted us his permission.

  On New Year’s Eve there was a dance for the members of our church community. Meri looked fabulous in the peach dress she wore, which accentuated her curves in a way that I had avoided noticing before our engagement. I didn’t need any proof that I was attracted to her at this point. I knew it without a doubt and I was very excited about my decision to marry her. It seemed throughout the dance that we were the only people there. The voices and chatter of our friends and family seemed to be just a background hum as we got lost in each other. She was the most beautiful girl in the whole room; I couldn’t take my eyes off her the whole night. When I took Meri home and we were saying good night, I leaned in and kissed her. I hadn’t planned to do it, but I didn’t try to hold myself back. It was a sweet kiss that felt natural and right. It was the best start to the New Year I could have envisioned. That kiss told me that I had made the right decision to ask for Meri’s hand. Our chemistry was undeniable.

  Meri and I set a wedding date for April 21, which gave us nearly four more months of courtship, and provided the time for us to even further deepen our relationship. This was an important and special time. After three subsequent marriages, I now understand what a luxury this courtship was. Since we had a monogamous engagement, there were no complications from the emotions and feelings of another wife. Meri and I were able to date as much and as freely as we wished. We were able to get to know each other unencumbered and unhindered.

  Those four months were wonderful. Our friendship developed into a remarkable love affair. We shared everything with one another. We got to know each other on an intimate yet chaste level.

  After that first kiss, we shared many more sweet kisses. It was clear to me that when Meri and I were finally married, there would be no awkwardness between us. Meri was my fiancée and we were very much in love. Our relationship was a typical love story, the kind you see in movies and on TV. She would smile from across a room and I would wink back at her. We must have aggravated our friends and families with how much in love we were. While we were outwardly infatuated with each other, deep down we were becoming the soul mates I suspected we would be from the moment we met.

  During our courtship, we were completely carefree. We had minimum-wage jobs that we weren’t committed to. We didn’t have much money and were trying to prepare for our wedding and honeymoon, but it didn’t bother us. We didn’t know where we were going to live after the honeymoon. We didn’t know what we were going to do, but it was exciting. We had each other, and that was all that mattered.

  Meri

  Kody and I were married on April 21, 1990. We had a very special private wedding ceremony and a traditional wedding reception. I wore a simple and elegant white dress that I had made by hand, and I had my heart set on Kody wearing a white tuxedo. I look back now at pictures from our wedding and laugh, but with the eighties having just ended, it was definitely the style of the day.

  Kody and I chose to spend our wedding night at our new home. It felt special to us to be able to begin our intimate lives together in our own home, rather than in some hotel room. We were deeply and passionately in love with each other. There was no awkwardness between us, everything felt just as it should be. We had plans to leave on our honeymoon the next day, but unfortunately I got sick and that delayed our plans. Although being in this new relationship with Kody was absolutely amazing and wonderful, and we had a lot of fun together planning our wedding, I think my getting sick was just a result of the stress and pressure that comes along with planning a wedding. So for the next three days, we stayed at home. Kody started calling our home our honeymoon cottage. Finally, toward the end of the third day, I felt good enough to travel. There we were, four days after we were married, finally leaving on our honeymoon. We only got as far as Pocatello, Idaho, that night.

  Our honeymoon was a typical Kody Brown–style trip—everything was spontaneous and unplanned. We were just so excited to be married and to be traveling with only each other for company. The next day, we made it to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, our official honeymoon destination. We spent a memorable few days there, sightseeing around the quaint little tourist town and exploring our new relationship. We had a magical and romantic experience together, a wonderful beginning to our new life.

  After our honeymoon was over, Kody and I settled down in a town called American Fork, about half an hour south of Salt Lake City. Our new life together was sweet and romantic. We spent as much time together as possible, just basking in the love shared between us. I was nineteen and Kody was twenty-two. We didn’t have any set plans for the future yet. We didn’t have school or careers tying us down. We just wanted our love affair to continue.

  During that first year of marriage, we weren’t always the most responsible young adults. At one point, we both held jobs that didn’t really interest us. We needed to make a trip out of town to see his family in Wyoming, so we quit our jobs and decided to just get ones that we actually liked when we returned home. We loved spending time together more than anything, and before we had kids or other wives in the picture, we were able to live carefree. Maybe we were purely enjoying ourselves, or maybe we were taking our time figuring out what we wanted. I think it was healthy not to have rushed into anything, pretending that we were more mature and knowledgeable than we were.

  One thing Kody and I both knew, and had committed to each other from the moment we got married, was that there would be other wives. Even in the early days of our marriage, we talked about a second wife. We knew it was going to happen, but we didn’t know when or how. We would often have discussions about where we would meet our next wife, who she would be, and how we would bring her into the family. On occasion, when Kody and I would meet a woman, he and I would discuss whether she would be a good fit for our family. We knew it would happen eventually, but in the meantime, we were enjoying the time we had together, learning, sharing, and falling more in love each day.

  Chapter Two

  JANELLE AND KODY

  Janelle

  I grew up in Bountiful, Utah, and was raised in the LDS faith. My mother had met some Mormon missionaries while in college, and after she graduated, having converted to Mormonism, she moved to Utah to be with others of her faith. My father died when I was two years old and my mother remarried, but my stepfather was not a hands-on father. He was distant and emotionally unavailable. Eventually my mother divorced him. I knew when I got married and had children of my own that I would look for a man who would be intimately engaged in every aspect of our children’s lives.

  One of the things instilled in you if you grow up LDS is that you are living the only true faith—nothing else will get you to eternal exaltation. Toward the end of high school, I met a student named Adam, with whom I was quite taken. I knew he wasn’t Mormon, which meant we had no hope of being together—unless he converted. I called my grandmother and told her about the boy I had a crush on. She recognized his name and remembered that his family had at one time lived next door to her.

  “They’re in the clan,” my grandmother told me.

  Many of my relatives are still down south, and to southerners there is only one clan—the Ku Klux Klan.

  I was shocked, and told my grandmother so.

  My r
eaction made her laugh. “They’re not in that clan,” my grandmother explained. “They’re polygamists.”

  Until my grandmother told me this, I had no idea polygamists actually existed, let alone lived among us. I had grown up in the LDS church of Utah, but I was unaware that there was such a thing as polygamy. I thought it was a myth or something from the early days of Mormonism, an old-fashioned tradition that had long since been abandoned.

  Adam was not completely committed to his fundamentalist faith and I was happy to welcome him to the LDS church. Not long after he converted, we began courting. Soon we were married in the temple, but my husband wasn’t really interested in either his new faith or the branch of fundamentalism he’d been raised in. In fact, he had very little spiritual conviction.

  His family, however, fascinated me. I would tell my friends, “My in-laws are polygamous.” I was proud to know people in a subculture. They were a novelty.

  One of the reasons I was so transfixed by Adam’s relatives was that they were so outwardly normal. In fact, they were completely conventional and contemporary. They didn’t live behind closed doors or practice any strange customs. They worked, they participated in the community, they sent their kids to local schools. My in-laws didn’t dress strangely, as some fundamentalist sects did. The women were strong and independent and had an equal say in family affairs with their husbands.

  If only I’d been as enamored with my husband as I was with his family. Unfortunately, Adam and I had problems right from the start. We weren’t spiritually, emotionally, or romantically compatible. We lived together for only six months before he moved out.

  Although my husband and I had separated, I remained close to his family, including Adam’s sister Meri. (Little did I know how close we’d eventually become!) At first, I have to admit it was the novelty that drew me to them. But then I began to feel emotionally invested in them. I enjoyed their large gatherings and the complex and generous notion of family that they presented. At the time, Adam’s father had four wives and too many children to count—some were adults like my husband and some were still in elementary school.