When Sister Wives premiered in 2010, the Brown family said one of their goals was to demonstrate how functional plural marriage could be — even with its complex dynamics. In the five years since then, we’ve witnessed the many ups and downs of the family. Still, they’ve stuck together and almost always put a positive spin on the challenges they faced. But now they seem to be facing one of their biggest challenges yet — in the form of an Internet catfish “Sam Cooper,” who had an emotional affair with Meri Brown after she legally divorced Kody Brown.
Everything started coming to light last month when Sam began exposing the details of their relationship online. Following weeks of rumors, Meri admitted on Monday she “began speaking with someone,” but maintained she “never met this person.” (Meri said Sam turned out to be a woman, which is also what the evidence indicates. For the sake of this post, though, Sam will be referred to with male pronouns.) But it’s apparent Sam isn’t going away that easily… On his blog yesterday, he claimed “Meri and I had sex over 60 times” and said he had password-protected video footage to prove it. He’s also added a series of voicemails that Meri left between April in June, including some very passionate ones.
This one from June 30 seemed to come after an argument. In the recording, Meri said she “wasn’t comparing [Sam] in any way” to Kody — but if she did, Sam would “win on all f**king levels.” She continued, “You don’t think that I think that you’re taller, better looking. Better looking, anyway. Kinder, sweeter, you care about me. You want me. You say that you’re willing to fight for me, you say all these things about love and affection and passion. So yeah, if I were to compare you — you win — all the time.”
In another recording, Meri said she was driving as fast as she could to meet up with Sam at a hotel. In a voicemail two days later, she was still trying to give him directions on getting to a place where they could meet up, so it seems that first meeting never happened. Still, Sam claimed on his blog they were together “at Disneyland, twice, in Utah for a whole week, and all the number of times in and around Las Vegas.” He added of Meri’s explanation, “She does not want to admit to an affair, she does not want to admit that she fell in love with me and she does not want to admit we had sex, a lot. Instead she can simply say I was catfished, I never met him, I was vulnerable and upset.”
Despite Meri’s admission, this story is still developing.
