Brandi Rhodes’ Husband Cody Rhodes: Marriage, Family, and Their Wrestling Power Partnership
Brandi Rhodes’ husband is Cody Rhodes, the WWE megastar known as “The American Nightmare.” Their relationship stands out because it isn’t just a celebrity marriage—it’s a long-running partnership built inside the same high-pressure industry, with both of them taking turns leading, supporting, and reinventing their careers while keeping family at the center.
Who Is Cody Rhodes, Brandi Rhodes’ Husband
Cody Rhodes is a professional wrestler and entertainment figure who built his name first through WWE and later through a major reinvention that helped reshape modern wrestling. If you know him from today’s WWE main-event spotlight, it can be easy to forget how much of his story is about rebuilding—leaving a comfortable role, betting on himself, and returning with more leverage than he had before.
That arc matters when you’re trying to understand his marriage to Brandi. Their relationship has often mirrored his career: ambitious, occasionally risky, and deeply strategic. Cody isn’t just “a wrestler with a famous wife.” He’s someone who has repeatedly chased growth—even when it meant uncertainty—and Brandi has been the closest person to that process, not as a passenger, but as a co-pilot.
How Brandi and Cody Met
They met through WWE. Brandi entered WWE’s ecosystem in a role that put her near the action but not inside the ring at first, while Cody was already established as an on-screen performer. Wrestling workplaces are unusual: you’re traveling constantly, working long hours, and spending more time with coworkers than with anyone back home. That kind of environment can speed up connections—but it can also test them quickly, because there’s nowhere to hide when schedules are exhausting and pressure is constant.
The fact that their relationship survived the early years says something. Lots of wrestling relationships burn hot and fast, then fade under travel stress and public scrutiny. Brandi and Cody built something that held through career changes, company changes, and the unique strain of being recognized everywhere while still trying to live like real people.
When They Got Married
Brandi Rhodes and Cody Rhodes married in September 2013. The timing is important: they committed to each other while both were still actively moving through WWE’s demanding machine—one where storylines, travel, and public perception can swallow your personal life if you let it.
In wrestling, marriage doesn’t automatically simplify anything. It often raises the stakes. Suddenly you’re not just making career decisions for yourself—you’re making them for a shared future. That theme shows up repeatedly in how fans describe their dynamic: Cody may chase big career swings, but Brandi is rarely portrayed as someone dragged along. Instead, she’s framed as someone who helps shape the decisions, then helps hold the structure together when the outside world gets loud.
Why Their Relationship Works in an Industry That Breaks Relationships
Wrestling can be brutal on marriages for three reasons: time, attention, and identity. Time is obvious—constant travel and unpredictable schedules. Attention is trickier—fans can feel entitled to your personal life, and social media can turn normal couple moments into debate topics. Identity is the hidden one—when your job is also a persona, you can start confusing who you are with what you play on television.
Brandi and Cody have managed to keep those forces from tearing them apart by doing something surprisingly rare: they treat the relationship like a real-life partnership, not a storyline. That doesn’t mean they never argue or struggle; it means they don’t build their identity as a couple on public performance. Even when they’ve been on reality programming, they’ve maintained a sense that certain lines shouldn’t be crossed for content.
Brandi’s Career, and Why Cody Isn’t the “Main Character” at Home
It’s easy to reduce Brandi to “Cody’s wife,” especially if you only know the headlines. But Brandi has her own professional identity: ring announcing, wrestling, brand-building, and leadership roles in wrestling organizations. When you look at their marriage through that lens, the dynamic changes. This isn’t a relationship where one person’s life is the “real career” and the other person’s life is the accessory.
Instead, their relationship often looks like two ambitious people taking turns carrying the load. Sometimes Cody is in the center of the spotlight. Sometimes Brandi is steering the bigger life decisions—especially when it comes to how public they want their family to be, what boundaries they set, and how they handle the nonstop opinions that come with fame.
Working Together: The Best Part and the Hardest Part
Couples who work together often say the same thing: it’s amazing until it isn’t. The upside is obvious—shared goals, shared understanding, and fewer “you don’t get what my job is like” arguments. The downside is that the job can follow you home. A bad day can become a shared bad day. A stressful decision can feel twice as heavy because it affects both of you.
Brandi and Cody have lived that reality in a way most couples never will. Their careers have overlapped in public, in business, and in creative storytelling. That means their wins are shared—and their criticism is shared too. When fans don’t like something, they don’t just critique an angle; they critique the people behind it. Handling that as a couple requires thick skin and a strong internal compass, or else the noise can start defining your relationship for you.
Family Life: Their Children and What They’ve Shared Publicly
Brandi and Cody share two daughters. Their first child, Liberty Iris Runnels, was born in June 2021. In August 2025, they welcomed their second daughter, Leilani Ella Runnels. While they do share occasional family moments publicly, they’ve generally kept their children out of the constant spotlight compared to many celebrity couples.
That choice is telling. Plenty of famous families build a brand around parenting content. Brandi and Cody have been more selective, which suggests a very intentional approach: share joy, protect privacy, and keep their kids from becoming part of the entertainment machine before they’re old enough to choose it.
Parenthood also reframes everything. Consider how different wrestling feels when you’re not only thinking about your next match, but also about long-term health, travel, and what kind of life your children will remember. Fans often notice a shift in Cody’s public tone once he became a father—less purely about chasing personal milestones, more about building a stable legacy.
What Fans Find Most Interesting About Brandi Rhodes’ Husband
When people search this topic, they’re usually looking for one of three things:
First: They want the straightforward identity answer. Cody Rhodes is Brandi Rhodes’ husband.
Second: They want the relationship story—how it started, how it lasted, and what it looks like behind the scenes.
Third: They want the “secret sauce.” How do two high-profile people in the same chaotic industry keep it together?
The honest answer is that it doesn’t look like magic. It looks like two people making the unglamorous choices repeatedly: choosing alignment over ego, choosing boundaries over constant access, and choosing long-term stability over short-term applause. That’s not as viral as drama, but it’s far more impressive.
The Cody Rhodes Public Persona vs. the Husband Role
Cody’s public persona is built on confidence, narrative, and big emotional moments—because that’s what wrestling demands. But the husband role is different. The husband role requires patience, compromise, and emotional steadiness when the cameras aren’t there. One of the reasons fans respect their marriage is that Cody’s private-life image (as it’s been presented publicly) often reads as supportive and consistent rather than performative.
That doesn’t mean he’s perfect. It means the overall story people see is one of partnership rather than spectacle. In an era where every relationship can become content, that restraint is part of why their marriage still feels believable.
Quick Facts
- Brandi Rhodes’ husband: Cody Rhodes
- Married: September 2013
- Children: Two daughters, including Liberty (born 2021) and Leilani (born 2025)
- Industry: Professional wrestling and entertainment
