‘Sister Wives’: Did Robyn Brown Have a Job After Joining the Family?
In the Sister Wives memoir, Robyn Brown talks about contributing a paycheck to the family. Did Robyn have a job after joining the family? Here’s what we know about Robyn and her financial contribution to the family.
Robyn talks about contributing a paycheck to the family
When Robyn was added to the family in 2010, she walked into a family where the roles had already been established for decades. Janelle Brown and Meri Brown contributed to the family financially by working full-time jobs alongside Kody Brown.
Christine Brown’s role in the family since the beginning was the stay-at-home mom who took care of the majority of the domestic duties as well as cooking and homeschooling their combined 13 children they had at that time. In the Sister Wives 2012 memoir, Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage, Christine recalled working night shifts while pregnant to help the family get by.
In the memoir, Robyn talks about blending her finances with the rest of the family when she married Kody.
“Although I lived in my own house when I married Kody, I still became part of the Brown family in every way — I helped out with all the kids and contributed my paycheck to the family to help pay all the bills. This cooperative living was new for me; as a single working mom, it was usually up to me to make things work financially. Money was tight, but knowing that we had one another’s backs was wonderful.”
Robyn Brown
Did Robyn Brown have a job in Lehi, Utah?
The Brown’s home in Lehi, Utah, had three attached apartments, allowing the family to be under one roof. When Robyn married Kody, she moved from Montana with her three children to a separate home in Lehi, near the Brown family.
Robyn was nervous that her sister wives wouldn’t see the “value” in her since she was added another mortgage and three more children to the family with no income to contribute.
In the early Sister Wives seasons, Robyn felt the pressure to find a job. In the meantime, she was helping Christine with child care. Robyn was shown on Sister wives having many of her sister wives’ children at her house after school, indicating she was helping with the childcare when she could.
If Robyn had a job during this time, Sister Wives would have documented it. Janelle, Meri, and Christine were filmed anytime they attempted a new business venture or shifted career paths. Because of this, many Sister Wives don’t believe Robyn had a job after joining the Brown family.
Robyn talks about the family’s TLC paycheck
In the family’s memoir, Robyn reveals that after moving to Las Vegas, Nevada, in Sister Wives Season 3, and the TLC paychecks were a steady source of income for the Browns, she felt a sense of financial equality among the wives.
The Browns started a company called Kody Brown Family Entertainment, LLC, registered in Nevada. According to Open Corporates, the LLC lists Kody, and his then-four wives, Janelle, Robyn, Meri, and Christine, as “members.”
Through this LLC, the Brown family was getting paid by TLC for their participation in Sister Wives. It’s estimated that the Browns made anywhere from $25,000 to $40,000 per episode.
The money would go into a family bank account through this LLC to pay for mortgages and other significant family purchases. But Meri, Janelle, and Christine each had side gigs to earn money for themselves and their children.
“But now that we have a television show, we are essentially working together as a family on a daily basis and we are a team financially. We split all of our money evenly and help each other out,” Robyn wrote.
She said Sister Wives “evened out any sense of financial inferiority or instability” among the wives, indicating how she felt before this.
Robyn’s debt and business ventures in Las Vegas
During Robyn’s 8-year-long marriage to her first husband, David Jessop, she racked up over $32,000 in debt from various store credit cards, including Sears, Target, and Victoria’s Secret. For the Browns to get approved for the loans for the mortgages in Las Vegas, the family had to pull funds from the family’s account to pay off that debt.
When the family moved to Vegas, Robyn started the polygamy-inspired jewelry and clothing boutique, My Sister Wife’s Closet. According to Christine’s daughter, Mykelti Brown, Robyn still runs the business from her home in 2023, despite the designs on the website remaining unchanged since 2019.
Besides My Sister Wife’s Closet, there was never a mention of Robyn having a job on Sister Wives, so it’s unclear what paycheck she is referring to.
Sister Wives Season 18 is expected to air in September 2023.
