At a standstill. Kody Brown isn’t in a good place with his and Janelle Brown’s sons Gabriel Brown and Garrison Brown after they argued over the family’s strict COVID-19 rules.
“[We’re] not good. Not talking,” the 52-year-old reality TV star says in Us Weekly’s exclusive sneak peek of the Sunday, February 6, episode of Sister Wives: One on One. “It’s like one of those relationships where we’ve gotta do a lot of work.”
During the second part of the One on One tell-all special, Kody explains to host Sukanya Krishnan how fractured his relationships with 23-year-old Garrison (whose full name is Robert Garrison) and 21-year-old Gabe have become since he gave the boys an ultimatum about their social lives amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“I make rules, you guys abide by them. I understand that these two needed their social lives. I totally get it. But in this case, COVID is different,” the Wyoming native says in the clip, reflecting on what went wrong. “It’s changed everything for everybody, and they want it all to be the same.”
The plural family patriarch — who also shares sons Logan, 27, and Hunter, 24, and daughters Maddie, 26, and Savannah, 17, with second wife Janelle, 52 — explains that his two youngest boys didn’t understand that in order for him to visit their family, they couldn’t keep going out with friends.
“They need to realize that they should go and date that girlfriend, that’s fine, but you need to move out of the house so I can be home,” Kody adds.
Earlier this season, fans saw Kody try to lay down the law with Gabe specifically during a January episode of Sister Wives.
At the time, the father of 18 revealed that if Gabe wanted to keep seeing his girlfriend, then Kody would be forced to stay away from all of Janelle’s kids due to the risk of spreading the virus from house to house.
“The real issue here is, you had to choose between me coming over or seeing your girlfriend,” Kody told Gabe in the January 16 episode, which prompted the young man to tear up. “Why? Why was I made to make that decision?” Gabe said, later noting, “My family is so focused on being right that this is ruining my family.”
Looking back at the scene during Sunday’s tell-all, Kody admits that he still feels like he wasn’t being respected by his boys in Janelle’s home. That tension, however, has caused him to have major issues with his sons.
“We need therapy. I need a sit-down with my boys and get something straight,” Kody says to Krishnan. “I’ve gotten to the point where I’m so angry about what happened that we’re not communicating. And I think they are too.”
In addition to his spiritual marriage with Janelle, who he’s been with since 1993, Kody is spiritually married to Meri Brown and legally wed to Robyn Brown. He and wife Christine Brown announced their separation in November 2021 after more than 25 years together.
Sister Wives airs on TLC Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.
