Sister Wives' Christine and Janelle Brown Reveal When They Knew Their Marriages to Kody Were Over

Nothing changes if nothing changes. Just ask these two Sister Wives stars.

While the hit TLC series may have once centered on Kody Brown navigating marriages to four women, the 54-year-old is now down to just one spouse, fourth wife Robyn Brown, and fans have speculated as to why his other wives have left Coyote Pass.

Until now. 

Christine Brown announced in November 2021 that she and Kody—with whom she shares children Aspyn, 28, Mykelti, 27, Paedon, 25, Gwendlyn, 21, Ysabel, 20, and Truely, 13—had split up. They had been in a plural marriage, which they never made legal, for 25 years.

Janelle Brown, meanwhile, revealed she and Kody had seperated after almost 30 years of marriage last December. The couple have six kids: Logan, 29; Maddie, 27; Hunter, 26; Garrison, 25; Gabriel, 22, and Savanah, 18.

So, what really happened in their respective relationships that caused them to leave Kody?

"I didn't realize anything was wrong, until I knew something was wrong," Christine told E! News in an exclusive interview. "And then I was like, 'Oh, well, then I'm going to do something different now.'"

For Janelle, "it was really just that Kody and I really had been growing apart for a lot of years," she explained. "I feel like we had a really great run. But we just kind of started to grow apart."

A major breaking point for both women, however, was Kody's strained relationships with their children, which caused a major shift in Janelle's perspective about their future as a family. 

"When he became estranged from my children, it was like, 'I think maybe I can actually do something different here,'" Janelle explained. "Because, look, I would have stayed and stayed and stayed if the kids were okay."

While she's "glad" she is in the place she's in now, Janelle admitted she never envisioned breaking up with Kody, saying, "I thought we'd be married forever."

Similar to Janelle, Christine said Kody's fractured relationship with their kids led her to the realization that it wasn't the dynamic she wanted for her family.

"It just wasn't the relationship that I was looking for for my kids and it wasn't a relationship I was looking for myself," she said. "And then I was like, 'Okay, well, now that I found that, I'm gonna move on, and I'm gonna go, and I'm not going to stay anymore.'"

And Christine ultimately found the partnership she wanted, marrying David Woolley this past October. 

Though Kody has struggled with three of his four marriage ending in the last few years, the reality stars stressed that everybody should be allowed to evolve. 

"When you know it's not working anymore," Christine said, "then you need to change it because your life is your life. And you are the one who dictates what you do. If it doesn't work, then change it."

Not that means it was easy to end their respective marriages, with Janelle revealing she and Kody tried "several times" to salvage their relationship. 

"I am an advocate for sticking around and trying to make a relationship work right," she said. "Every relationship ebbs and flows and I think we really had just hit a point where it wasn't coming back."

Still, Janelle explained she "mourned" the dream of their marriage rather than the reality of it when it was over.

"The relation had become pretty apathetic," she said, "But I'm more into the ideal what we worked for all those years, like the one family and the kids have siblings, and we've accomplished that, I realize."

Christine also grieved the end of her relationship with Kody, the unraveling beginning even before the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Before when things started falling apart, I was grieving and I was sad then," Christine said. "I went through some grieving when I saw that we weren't going to be doing family things anymore."