Absence makes the heart grow fonder? Sister Wives’ Kody Brown and Janelle Brown’s nerves were at an all-time high before reuniting after time apart amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“Here we go. OK, here we are,” Kody, 52, says in Us Weekly’s exclusive sneak peek of the Sunday, April 2, episode of the reality series, while approaching Janelle’s house. “Been a whole month. Been away from our family.”
When the coronavirus pandemic began, Kody’s four wives, Janelle, Meri Brown, Christine Brown and Robyn Brown, had to separate their households to avoid passing the virus to each other. The distance went against their polygamist lifestyle, especially since Kody ended up spending most of the quarantine with Robyn because she has the youngest children.
Kody was overwhelmed with emotion when he finally saw Janelle, 51, and a few of their six children, after such a prolonged absence from their lives.
“Hi! I’ve missed you so much. I was having so much anxiety coming here,” he says while the pair embrace. “It’s nice to see you.”
Janelle, who entered a “spiritual marriage” with Kody in 1993, admits she was “having a lot of anxiety” before their reunion as well. The couple share a kiss before the Wyoming native gives two of his sons and one daughter a big hug on camera.
The pair opens up about the ups and downs they went through mentally while apart, telling viewers how it tested their relationship. Kody asks, “We’ve been apart so long, what are we?” during their joint confessional.
He then looks at Janelle before the duo start to giggle. “It’s funny. We see each other, we start to laugh at each other kind of, because we know,” Kody says, before Janelle chimes in, “We’re fine!”
The family’s patriarch adds: “I felt almost immediately, we’re right back in the game.”
The mother of six reveals that although she’s happy Kody is home, their kids started to panic after he was gone for such a long period of time.
“I think at the first, it was kind of, whatever, just a couple of weeks, no big deal,” she explains in the teaser. “But then as it started to get closer to the end, they were kind of like, ‘This is dumb. This is really dumb and dad’s going to ruin the family.’”
She quickly stops her husband from rolling his eyes, adding, “This is how they were feeling. They were alarmed. They were alarmed that somehow, we’re going to wreck the family.”
Earlier this week, Robyn, 42, exclusively told Us how she felt about having Kody with her throughout the majority of the pandemic, admitting she felt guilty.
“I was feeling, like, bad. I was feeling not right,” she said on Monday, March 29. “This is not fair. I mean, I chose this lifestyle for a reason and when things are out of whack, it bothers me.”
She noted that her sister wives had to protect their households as well, but she is confident the situation was hard for them.
“I know that they were making choices that they felt comfortable with as far as traveling and having people in the home,” she told Us. “Making it so that Kody was not able to go see them.”
Kody, for his part, told Us exclusively in February that he was “sort of strung out on this relationship conveyer belt” amid the different COVID restricts and rules.
Pandemic or not, Janelle previously told Us that it’s never easy seeing your husband with another woman or another family. “Of course I still get jealous,” the TLC personality said earlier this month. “But I learned a long time ago [that] you really just have to figure out how to be OK with yourself.”
Sister Wives airs on TLC Sundays at 10 p.m. ET.
