What Was Robyn's Pre-'Sister Wives' Life Like?

For the casual viewer of TLC's Sister Wives (should such a thing exist), it would appear that Robyn's been in the Brown family forever, but she hasn't. When the show first began, Robyn hadn't even been introduced to Kody's children yet, and her integration into the family wasn't exactly seamless. But after some time, she found her place in the Brown family and now it's hard to remember what those early episodes of the show were like before she lived with them. However, Robyn's life before joining the Sister Wives was pretty rough.

As you probably already know, Robyn was married before to a man named David Preston Jessop. While they were of the Mormon faith, their marriage was monogamous, and Robyn wasn't crazy about it. According to Starcasm, Robyn and David, who ran his own HVAC business, married in 1999. Robyn was a stay at home mom to Dayton, Breanna, and Aurora, and she left her marriage with over $30,000 in debt. In 2011, she made a shocking revelation on Twitter: Her marriage ended because David was abusive.

Robyn's troubled past first began when she became pregnant with her son Dayton before marriage — not a huge deal to most of the world, but a massive no-no in their faith. And in a 2013 Sister Wives episode, she told the kids the whole story, including the fact that her marriage was doomed from the start because she took her purity and "gave it to someone who begged for it."

"When I found out I was pregnant, I was devastated at that point. I was really scared. I spent the next nine years trying to make it right,” she said. “I was trying so hard to love my husband at the time.”

This makes it super understandable that she was reluctant to enter a relationship with Kody when they met at her cousin's church, but eventually, everything worked out.

Kody told me later he knew he loved me from the beginning. He said God told him that we all belonged together. It took months for me to be convinced that it was right. I was making sure this time that I had found my soulmate.

The whole time Kody and I were courting, he was so patient with my fears and my issues that had come from my last marriage. He was so sweet, kind and loving, that he slowly broke down my walls, made me believe that a man could be honorable and that true love, the kind that lasts forever, exists and was ours to share.

Though it may be hard for many viewers to understand the Browns' lifestyle, it clearly makes Robyn happy, and that's something she deserves.

Image: TLC