Mariah Brown came out as a lesbian on an emotional January Sister Wives episode, and now she’s going public with Audrey Kriss!
Her relationship is Instagram official. She writes:
“When your girlfriend is an artist, so you pretend to art for a day just for her, alongside a glowing photo of herself with a pretty brunette.”
Yup, girlfriend. It’s also Facebook official.
Both halves of the couple announced their relationship status on their respective profile pages, leaving no doubt that this is the real thing.
She even took to Twitter for the social media trifecta, identifying her by name: “Shoutout to Audrey Kriss for literally changing my life.”
Kriss, 21, a fellow student of the Sister Wives star at Utah’s Westminster College, showed Mariah “that who I am is perfectly okay.”
It’s great to see Mariah so happy now.
Mariah Brown coming out was just part of a tough year that also saw her family grapple with Meri Brown’s catfishing scandal and infidelity.
Meri, Mariah’s 46-year-old mom, fell in love with an online profile named Samuel Cooper who was really a woman named Jackie Overton.
The drama played out on TV, with Meri and husband Kody Brown struggling to repair the damage to their marriage and family since.
In early 2017, it was Mariah’s turn to deliver a shocker, coming out of the closet even as she admitted being gay was her biggest fear once.
The family had no clue it was coming.
“No one thought that Mariah coming out as gay was going to be the announcement,” a family source said of her now-famous sit-down.
“Especially considering Mariah was one of the children who said would practice polygamy when she married,” said the source at the time.
Mom Meri was floored by it.
“I didn’t see this coming, I thought I knew my daughter … I didn’t,” she said, while a show insider claims the cast and crew were in the dark:
“No one knew what Mariah coming out was going to be filmed. Robyn, Christine, Janelle, and Kody were all also genuinely blindsided.”
The family’s church, the Apostolic United Brethren, espouses that homosexuality is a sin, and Meri and Kody have struggled with this.
Just the same, Mariah’s family – her siblings, parents and “sister moms” – has been overwhelmingly supportive after the big news sank in.
“We’re just happy she’s figured out who she is,” Janelle said.
“It’s tremendous when you see a kid do that.”
Kody Brown, for his part, was candid about his thoughts on having a homosexual child, which he admits was difficult in a sense.
“You come from an Old Testament religion, you are not excited that your child comes out,” Kody explained after Mariah’s news.
However, the father of 18 said he decided a long time back that if this scenario ever occurred, he would not stand in the way:
“I thought about this years ago, and I made a decision.”
“My job as a dad is to love and respect, not to judge.”