Meet Mindy Jessop From 'Sister Wives': Did Kody Brown Consider Marrying 4th Wife Robyn's Niece?
She had been the nanny to his youngest kids.
getty Kody Brown from Sister Wives is the only husband of four wives. For ten years, audiences have watched the polygamist family change and grow, including when they added fourth wife Robyn in season one, two new babies in subsequent seasons bringing the total number of kids to 18, and the marriages of some of the older children in recent years.
But what they have not done so far is add any more wives to the family for Kody Brown himself.
While Brown has not formally courted any women on camera, the rumors about him being open to a fifth wife are always present.
Back in 2016, audiences started to wonder about the relationship between Brown and a young woman named Mindy Jessop. Jessop, who was about 32 years old at the time, was living with fourth wife Robyn and nannying her youngest kids. Not only that, she is Robyn's niece from her first marriage.
Having a younger, a single woman around a man committed to plural marriages seems like a perfect recipe for courtship. Who is Mindy Jessop and did Kody Brown really consider marrying her?
1. The Brown family includes one husband, four wives, and 18 children.
The Brown family is arguably the most famous polygamist family in America. Audiences have tuned in to watch their reality show on TLC for ten years and have gotten to know all the different family members over that time.
In the first new episode of the lates season, Brown reminds audiences that he was raised as part of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Polygamy was once a central tenet of that faith but the LDS church now prohibits it.
As an adult, Brown decided he personally believed in the principle of plural marriage and left the mainstream church to join a more fundamentalist offshoot church. He married his first wife Meri in 1990, and they were already planning to add other wives to the family over time. Janelle became his second wife in 1993 and Christine joined the family in 1994. It was more than 15 years later that fourth wife Robyn joined the clan.
2. Polygamist families sometimes take an unconventional approach to courtship.
Courtship among families interested in plural marriage is going to be a bit unusual just because the relationship is so unusual. The Browns all got married before polygamy dating websites existed so their options for meeting people were usually limited to their church groups, which is how Kody and Meri originally met.
However, the second wife to enter the family wasn't raised as a polygamist and actually had been in a monogamist marriage before her union to Brown. In fact, Janelle had been married first to Meri's brother. That marriage didn't work out and Janelle ended up joining Kody and Meri as their second wife.
To make matters even weirder, Janelle's mother is Kody's father's second wife. They went back to meeting future wives at church-related events for Christine and Robyn, but it's clear that the Browns aren't opposed to sticking close to home to add to their family.
3. Who is Mindy Jessop?
Like Janelle, fourth wife Robyn Brown had been married once before marrying Kody. Her first husband is named David Jessop and they were married from 1999 to 2007 and had three children together. Robyn left the marriage and claims that Jessop was abusive to her and the kids. He was even arrested for assault in 2018.
Robyn's ex ultimately relinquished his parental rights and Kody legally adopted the three children in 2015. But Robyn didn't cut ties to the Jessop family entirely. A niece of hers from her marriage to Jessop came to live with her in Las Vegas and act as a nanny to her two children with Kody.
Mindy Jessop and Kody and Robyn Brown's son Soloman.
4. Why is the name Jessop so familiar?
When many people think of polygamy, they think of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), which was known for its extreme practice of the kind of marriage the Brow family has. In the FLDS, men married dozes of women, sometimes even taking underage girls as wives. Chruch leader Warren Jeffs is serving a life sentence for child sexual assault.
Merril Jessop was another leader in the FLDS. One of his wives, Carolyn Jessop, escaped her marriage and wrote a memoir about the experience. Jessop comes from a long line of FLDS members and they all have huge families — he himself has 54 children — so the name is very common among practitioners of polygamy.
We don't know how Robyn's ex and her niece connect to the Merril Jessop family but it's a safe bet that they are at least distantly related.
5. Was Kody courting Mindy Jessop?
Back in 2016, there were rumors that Brown was interested in adding a fifth wife. Not only that, he found a perfect potential wife right in his own house: Mindy Jessop. One salacious report suggested Brown was looking for someone younger and hotter than his other wives and Jessop fit the bill on all counts. He also thought a new wife might boost ratings on the show and ensure TLC would keep them on the air.
"He’s doing whatever it takes to save the show,” a friend of the family revealed at the time before adding, "He wants a younger female with a hot little body."
Jessop wasn't opposed to the idea of plural marriage for herself and even reportedly said, "I was raised in a plural family. I'm open to living a plural marriage, but the family bond would have to be really strong, otherwise it would just not be worth it to me." She even said the Brown family was a great example of polygamy, saying to the cameras, "There are a lot of things the Browns do that are inspiring to live a plural marriage."
The Brown family never directly addressed the rumors but Jessop took to Twitter to declare her single status with a photo of a mug that says "Dang It's Good To Be Single."
Jessop was single in 2016 and stayed that way.
6. Where is Mindy Jessop now?
These days, Jessop isn't living with the Brown family any longer. The 36-year-old stayed in Las Vegas after the Browns moved to Flagstaff, Arizona. She now works for a tanning salon and posts a lot of photos of her workplace on Instagram. She also has a Twitter account that she rarely uses and doesn't share a lot of personal information there. She does seem to support right-wing politics, based on her retweets.
It's certain that Jessop never married Kody Brown but we can't say for sure whether the two of them ever considered the possibility.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.