She's engaged to marry her girlfriend.
By Rebekah Kuschmider — Written on Feb 14, 2020
When Sister Wives premiered in 2010, TLC audiences got to meet Kody Brown, his wives Meri, Janelle, and Christine, and their twelve kids. That's right — Truley wasn't born until the middle of the first season.
As the seasons progressed, the family added Robyn, the fourth wife, her three kids from a previous marriage, and two more babies, bringing the grand total up to five adults and 18 children. Fans have watched the kids grow up, move out, and even get married and have babies of their own.
Mariah Brown is the third child in the family and first wife Meri's only daughter. She is also the only Brown child to announce that she is gay. Now 24 years old, she's finishing grad school and planning to marry fiancé, Audrey Kriss.
Where is Mariah Brown now, and how does her family feel about her future wife?
1. Mariah Brown is Meri's only biological child.
Dad Kody Brown first married Meri in 1990. They had been a couple for three years when Janelle joined them and Christine joined the family a year later. Janelle was the first to have a baby, giving birth to Logan in 1994.
Christine conceived her eldest daughter Aspyn shortly after joining the family. After five years of trying, Meri learned she was pregnant with her only daughter Mariah soon after. Mariah Brown was born in 1995.
2. Brown wanted to live a polygamous life when she was younger.
In the early seasons of the show, when Brown was a teenager, she was one of the only kids in the family who was open to considering plural marriage. It was only when she went to college that she started to feel differently about the future and what kind of marriage she wanted.
That was also around the time when her mother's relationship with her father was in serious trouble as well, which might have made her feel like polygamy wasn't as special as she had once thought.
3. When her mom had an online affair, Brown was furious.
In 2015, Meri Brown told her family that she had been having an online affair, but that it was actually a situation where she had been catfished. She had engaged in a relationship over phone and email with someone she thought was a man, but it turned out everything was a lie. It was actually a woman who had a history of engaging in fake relationships and pretending to be someone else.
The news shook the foundations of Meri and Kody's relationship and damaged the trust between her and her sister wives.
Meanwhile, Mariah Brown had known that her mother was engaged in some kind of sketchy online relationship and even had the sense that it was a catfishing situation. When everything came to a head, she was furious that her mom had cheated, if only emotionally, on her dad and that she had fallen for an online scam. It took years for Brown to come to terms with the way her mother betrayed her dad and rebuild their relationship.
4. Brown told her family she was gay in 2016.
In a much-promoted episode of the show, Brown asked all the adults in her family to meet with her at the same time. None of them knew what she was going to tell them and the apprehension was palpable as they all gathered. Brown came right out and said, "I'm gay."
After a moment of silence, second wife Janelle, visibly relieved, said, "Oh honey, I thought you were going to tell me you had cancer!" which may be one of the best reactions to a kid coming out ever shown on reality TV.
The rest of the family responded with hugs and expressions of support for her, though mother Meri had to take her time getting over the surprise. She didn't have a problem with homosexuality; she was just sad that her daughter hadn't come to her first and that the life she had always imagined was going to be different.
Brown did acknowledge the complexity of being LGBTQ+ in a religion that had sent her negative messages about being gay. While her parents hadn't been overtly homophobic, she recalled hearing bad things about gay people from church leaders and as a result, she always feared her own sexuality. It was when she went to college and got to know gay people that she started to acknowledge her feelings and started to accept who she was.
She said in an interview, "I was sitting next to one of my friends and we were talking about her girlfriend and I realized that this friend of mine is gay. So after she said that and I realized that I thought 'Oh that means I could date her!''' It was after that thought that she realized that she actually wanted to date women and not men.
Her family is supportive of her relationship with her girlfriend.
5. She met her girlfriend, Audrey Kriss a few years ago.
Brown didn't share the details of her love life on her family's TV show until she was in a serious relationship. She started dating Audrey Kriss in 2017, while they were still in college. Since graduating, the two of them live in Chicago together, while Brown studies for her masters degree.
The two of them are involved in feminist causes and have attended the Women's March in DC several times. It was at that event in 2019 that Brown popped the question. “We had just started dating when we came for the first time two years ago and it was such a special time for us that I wanted to propose there,” Brown shared in an interview.
Brown dropped to one knee in the middle of the crowded event and asked Kriss to be her wife.
"She was really sweet and started crying and I was crying and then I put the ring on her, got up and gave her a kiss and someone around us goes ‘Did she say yes?”’And she totally hadn’t yet! Then she said ‘I do! I do!’ and then realized that was the wrong thing to say and then said ‘Yes!’ She’s such a sweetheart. The ring is absolutely perfect, if I do say so myself.”
Brown proposed at the 2019 Women's March.
6. Where is Mariah Brown now?
These days, Brown and Kriss are living in Chicago, where Brown is attending graduate school. She is working toward a degree in social work and social justice and is training to become a yoga teacher. She is active in social justice causes and frequently talks about them on her social media accounts.
Kriss studied marketing in college and currently works as a freelance graphic designer. They have not set a wedding date that we know of.
And judging from an Instagram photo that Brown posted to her page in late January 2020, the couple are thinking of having kids someday. In the caption, Brown wrote, "one day she will be ‘mom’ to our kids, and ‘grandma’ to our grandkids. but right now and forever, she is my best friend, my partner, my babylove."
7. Brown announced her engagement to Kriss on the show's 2020 Valentine's Day episode.
On the Valentine's episode of Sister Wives, which recently aired on February 9, Brown told her family that she was engaged. When Brown showed her family Kriss's ring, Meri revealed that she was "so excited."
Kody Brown also expressed his delight about the engagement, saying, “We have chosen that we accept Mariah and her choosing to marry Audrey. We’re very happy with it and we are super excited to see their life together.”
He also told his daughter that he thought she should get married sooner than she planned to. Brown told her, “If you’re serious about it, you should just get married. You really don’t need to wait.”
They went back and forth a bit about it, with Brown revealing her concerns of wanting to finish school first, until eventually — and thankfully, for Mariah's sake — the wives stepped into lighten things up and say that they should all just have fun celebrating the engagement right now.
Sister Wives airs on TLC on Sundays.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.