It did not, however, smooth out the bumps in her relationship with the dad of 18. 

Though it was tough to formally unravel her decades-long union, the 55-year-old did so “thinking that things were going to be OK and they were not,” Meri continued. “He was nice to me for, I don’t know, maybe a month.” 

Honestly, she would have expected more gratitude considering she cleared the way for his life as a monogamist. 

Within a decade, Kody’s second and third wives Janelle Brown and Christine Brown announced their splits from the 57-year-old. And Meri, who had tied the knot with the patriarch in 1990, acknowledged the end of their relationship in 2022, leaving Robyn as his sole wife not just on paper but IRL. 

And while Meri wouldn’t go so far as to insist that he and Robyn plotted the path for their partnership, “if it wasn’t a plan, it worked very well in his favor,” she stressed of Kody. “I definitely would have done things differently when I divorced him had I been legally married to him still.” 

With the legalities of their separation already well-settled by then, “I think he absolutely benefited,” she continued. “So, he can call himself lucky.”