Meri Brown’s scandalous catfishing incident is rearing its ugly head once again.
As longtime Sister Wives fans will remember, Meri entered into an online relationship in 2015.
During a rough patch in her marriage to Kody — coincidentally right after he wed his fourth wife, Robyn — Meri met someone online who she believed to be a man named Sam Cooper.
However, Sam actually turned out to be a woman by the name of Jackie Overton.
Unbeknownst to Meri, she carried on an intimate online relationship with a woman for six months, who Meri claimed was urging her to leave Kody and their family behind.
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Meri’s catfishing incident rocked the Brown family to the core and created even more distance between herself and Kody.
Meri Brown says ‘so much crap was made up about’ her catfishing incident
Although it’s been nearly a decade since Meri was duped by Jackie Overton, the online affair remains a topic of conversation to this day.
During Sunday’s episode of Sister Wives, Meri brought up her catfishing incident while discussing how she met a friend online in recent years.
“So I was catfished quite a few years ago with a big fat liar,” Meri recalled.
The 52-year-old LuLaRoe retailer added that, in her mind, the version of events made public wasn’t entirely true.
Sister Wives confession: Meri still has a ‘hard time’ talking about her catfishing scandal
“That whole story was so completely blown out of proportion, and so much crap was made up about it,” Meri confessed. “And I still kind of have a hard time talking about it just because everybody has their opinions about it.”
Meri added that she’s come to grips with it all, though, because she knows her truth. But Meri also hinted that some of the Browns still hold it against her.
“Like, even with our family, some of our own family has their own opinions about [it],” Meri added.
These days, though, Meri has gotten smart about her online interactions. It’s part of her job to chat with people online for her businesses, but she makes it a prerequisite to video chat with them first before meeting in person.
Although Meri has worked to put her catfishing incident behind her, Jackie Overton is still speaking out about their relationship, and her version of events doesn’t match up with Meri’s.
Just last year, Jackie accused Meri of lying about their dalliance, claiming they had a full-on affair and that she didn’t catfish Meri in any way.
“There was no catfish,” Jackie tweeted in December 2022. “Meri lied to cover up the affair.”
Jackie went on to claim that Meri told her how “abusive” Kody could be and that she witnessed him “yelling and screaming” at Meri one time during a phone conversation.
Regardless of how things went down between Meri and Jackie, their interactions were enough to push Kody even further away from Meri, and it played a major role in their split after 33 years of marriage.
Sister Wives airs on Sundays at 10/9c on TLC.
