Death, Sex & Money | How a Former Polygamist “Sister Wife” Learned to Love Monogamy

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Arts, Tv & Film, Music

4.4 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 21 October 2025

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Christine Brown Woolley grew up in Utah with a dad and two moms, in a polygamist community called the Apostolic United Brethren. When she became an adult, she joined a polygamist marriage as a third wife, helped raise more than a dozen kids, and became co-star of the TLC reality show Sister Wives. Fast forward to 2025, and she has left her marriage and her polygamist faith. This week, she talks to Anna about the pros and cons of her former lifestyle, how being on a reality show helped her family to confront and process conflicts, and why she’s so happy being re-married and monogamous. Her new memoir is Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom. This episode was produced by Cameron Drews. Get more Death, Sex & Money with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes of DSM and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Death, Sex & Money show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/dsmplus to get access wherever you listen. If you’re new to the show, welcome. We’re so glad you’re here. Find us and follow us on Instagram and you can find Anna’s newsletter at annasale.substack.com. Our email address, where you can reach us with voice memos, pep talks, questions, critiques, is [email protected]. Get 50% Off Monarch Money, the all-in-one financial tool at ⁠www.monarchmoney.com/DSM⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	A few weeks ago, a popular reality show about marriage kicked off its 20th season.
0:07.0	I'm not talking about The Bachelor or 90-day fiancé or married at first sight.
0:12.4	This is a show where monogamy is not at the center and where mainstream ideas about marriage are challenged and questioned.
0:20.7	I'm talking about sister wives.
0:23.5	My name is Cody Brown, and you've got to meet my family. I'm a polygamist, but we're not
0:30.8	the polygamist you think you know. I have three awesome wives, Mary, Janelle, and Christine.
0:40.1	And I have 12 wonderful children.
0:43.5	Now, I'll be honest, I'm not a regular consumer of reality shows about dating and marriage, Mormon or otherwise.
0:51.0	But I get the appeal, especially when other members of our team give me quick play-by-plays
0:56.4	during editorial meetings. And I am interested in what reality shows do to the real people they feature,
1:05.5	people who are not public figures at the start, and then we can watch how being watched and being asked to reflect in
1:13.6	real time on camera changes them. Christine Brown-Wolly was the third wife of Cody Brown, and
1:21.7	pregnant with her sixth child, the family's 13th overall, when sister wives premiered in 2010. They've since divorced. Christine
1:30.7	has left the church and is remarried, but she's still on the show. Through 20 seasons, Sister
1:37.2	Wives has chronicled this very large family's day-to-day lives. The community they're part of is a Mormon offshoot called the Apostolic United Brethren, which has no affiliation with the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and they practice polygamy, or plural marriage, which the mainstream church forbids and is illegal in every state.
2:00.0	Christine did not have legal protections in her marriage with Cody. forbids and is illegal in every state.
2:04.3	Christine did not have legal protections in her marriage with Cody.
2:09.3	She was the third wife, married in the church, but never on legal documents.
2:20.5	But as she writes in her New York Times best-selling book, Sister Wife, a memoir of faith, family, and finding freedom. Her decision to leave her marriage in the Mormon community she grew up in was long, conflicted, and captured on camera.
2:27.8	I just realized that the world that I was living in, that other people were in charge of that
2:33.5	world, and I needed to be in charge of that world.
2:36.2	And I needed to be in charge of my own world.
	...

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