Who Is Leah Marie Brown? Meet Kody Brown's Rumored Fifth Wife On 'Sister Wives' — Who May Or May Not Be Real
Her name was on their Wikipedia page.
getty The polygamist Brown family has been a fan favorite on TLC for ten years now.
Sister Wives has given audiences a look into the world of polygamy, and they love watching Kody Brown and his multiple wives navigate life as an unconventional family.
Fans have always wondered if Brown would bring another wife into the family.
Rumors crop up occasionally about courting additional wives, but the Browns never really say one way or another if the rumors are true. Recently, not only have there been rumors online, but some anonymous internet users alleged to even know the name of Brown's new wife.
Who is Leah Marie Brown?
Here's everything we know about Kody Brown's rumored fifth wife, Leah Marie Brown.
They reportedly got married in 2019.
Supposedly, in 2019, Kody married someone named Leah Marie Brown.
Last spring, there was a surprising addition to the Brown family’s Wikipedia page.
The list of adults in the family included someone named Leah Marie Brown, with a birthday of September 15, 1990, and a wedding date to Kody of February 20, 2019.
Kody Brown married first wife Meri the same year this possible fifth wife was born, which is wild to think about. Leah Marie Brown would have been 28 at the time of a wedding to Kody, who is 51.
Before anyone could figure out what was really going on, though, the addition to the Wikipedia page disappeared. None of the Browns ever commented on it. Neither did TLC.
"We were watching the show and I started browsing their Wikipedia page and came across a 28-year old FIFTH wife who he just married last week?" one Reddit user wrote.
"I couldn’t find any reference to a Lisa Marie Brown anywhere else. Is this real?" they added.
Another Reddit user pointed out that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, and that it may not mean that Kody got married for the fifth time.
"I'm not buying it. I can go on there and add a 6th wife if you want, and I"m nobody," they wrote. "Wikipedia is only as good as it's sources, and there aren't any on that."
Is Leah Marie Brown a real person?
Everyone who follows the show is curious who Leah Marie Brown could be or if she's even real, as this this would be a major plot twist in the Sister Wives universe.
But finding anything about this possible fifth wife has been nearly impossible.
There's an author named Leah Marie Brown, but she has been publishing under that name since well before the alleged wedding date, so unless her maiden name was also Brown, chances are, she isn’t a new addition to this family.
Other reports speculating on the situation list a spelling of Leigh Marie Brown instead of Leah, and even claim to have a photo of her.
But the photo in question isn’t Leigh or Leah. It’s Mindy Jessop, Robyn’s niece and former nanny. Jessop was the subject of fifth wife speculation in 2016, but she shot it down. Jessop stayed behind in Las Vegas after the Brown family moved and now she works in a tanning salon.
So, is there actually a person named Leigh or Leah Marie Brown who is connected to the reality show family?
We don't know for sure, but we can't rule it out because there are other clues that point towards another wife joining the clan.
How many wives does Kody Brown have?
Based on what TLC and the Brown family officially say, Kody Brown has four wives. The family practices fundamentalist Mormonism, a religion that encourages multiple wives.
Brown married his first wife Meri in 1990, and they both knew they would add other wives to the family over time.
Janelle became his second wife in 1993 and Christine joined the family in 1994.
It was more than 15 years later that fourth wife Robyn joined the clan.
Now, some fans wonder if he has added a fifth wife named Leah Marie Brown.
Do blueprints tell a tale of a new wife?
Audiences got to watch as the Brown family navigated a move from Las Vegas to Flagstaff, AZ last season.
To anchor themselves in their new state, they bought a large, undeveloped section of land.
According to reports, it’s not actually one giant tract of land. In fact, it's four separate parcels and each wife owns one of them. They plan to build on a giant house for all of them, similar to how they lived in Utah, where they had a single home divided into three single-family sections. Robyn lived in a separate house a short distance from the big house.
The plans for the big house include one element that wasn't present in Utah: a private section for Kody — a detail that's raising eyebrows, because at no point in this series has Kody ever had his own place.
Each wife had her own house and Brown rotated between them, but never had a space he could retreat to on his own. Now, fans are wondering if that space isn’t for Brown at all, but is intended to house an additional wife.
Brown also seemed to own an extra house in Flagstaff.
The family had four houses in a single cul-de-sac in Las Vegas and they sold all of those after they moved to Flagstaff. With the move, they initially wanted to get rental homes, rather than adding new mortgages to their family budget. That almost worked out.
Three wives found rentals, but Christine ended up buying a place that was a better deal for her and her kids.
Then, Robyn was hounded out of her rental, so she and Kody bought another place for that part of the family. Janelle and Meri are still in their rentals and doing fine.
So why does Brown own yet another house?
Reports show he has one more house not too far from Robyn’s new place, but none of the current wives are living in it. Could it be an investment property? Is it a property for Janelle or Meri that needs work before they can move in? Or is this a house for the mysterious Leah/Leigh?
Will Brown ever take a fifth wife?
The will-he-or-won’t-he question of a fifth wife is probably the best kind of viral attention that TLC and the Browns can hope for. Fans who wonder about future wives are fans who are ready to keep watching future seasons.
The family never says they are courting a new wife, but they also never deny the rumors when they crop up.
No one ever claimed to have discovered who Leah Marie Brown is in real life, either.
It's possible it was the work of a troll messing with the Sister Wives Wikipedia page, but then again, it's also possible that a plural family is adding more members.
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.