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Before most of our favorite celebrity couples of today were formed, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver made their mark as one of the most high-profile pairs for over two decades.
After 25 years of wedded bliss and four children--Katherine, Patrick, Christopher, and Christina--their marriage came crashing down in 2011, after Arnold admitted to fathering a child with their then-housekeeper.
Now, after almost 10 years of negotiations, the former couple are finally getting close to finalizing their controversial divorce and are now rumored to be close to making an agreement, as it was recently reported that Arnold filed a “declaration of disclosure.”
With this legal divorce on the horizon after so long, it’s important we get to know Shriver for the woman she is outside of her identity as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ex-wife. Here’s everything you need to know about the award-winning journalist, author, and member of the Kennedy family.
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Born in Chicago on November 6, 1955, Maria Shriver is the second child and only daughter of Sargent Shriver, a politician founding director of the Peace Corps, and Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Maria’s mother is the founder of the Special Olympics and sister to U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy.
© GettyImagesMaria Shriver and Arnold Schwarzenegger at The Special Olympics on May 18, 2000
The family business, politics, is what ended up leading Shriver to find her own passion: journalism. She joined her father on the campaign trail for the 1972 presidential election, feeling at home in the back of the campaign plane with the reporters. “It turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said in her 2000 book, Ten Things I Wish I’d Known.
© GettyImagesArnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver at The Terminator 3 premiere in London
After graduating from Georgetown University in 1977, Maria began her career in journalism as a writer and producer for a television station in Philadelphia. In 1983, she was a national news correspondent for CBS, later going to NBC to work as a correspondent.
© GettyImagesArnold Schwarzenegger & Maria Shriver at Studio 54 in New York City in 1978.
The start of her career at NBC is also what introduced her to Arnold, when NBC newsman Tom Brokaw introduced the pair at the Robert F. Kennedy Pro-Celebrity Tennis tournament in 1977.
© GettyImagesMaria Shriver and her husband Arnold Schwarzenegger celebrate his re-election
Shriver and Schwarzenegger tied the knot in 1986, and for the first few years of their marriage, they were a bicoastal pair, with her working in Philadelphia and Baltimore while he pursued his surging acting career in Los Angeles.
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Their marriage lasted for 25 years, and in those two and a half decades, Maria earned a Peabody Award and served as the First Lady of California after Arnold was elected Governor in the state’s 2003 recall election.
© GettyImagesMaria Shriver and Hoda Kotb on The Today Show
As Arnold was finishing up his second term as governor, his marriage to Maria fell apart. She confronted him during a couples’ counseling session, telling their therapist to ask whether he fathered a child with their housekeeper Mildred. “I told the therapist, ‘It’s true,’” Arnold wrote in his 2012 biography, Total Recall.
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While Arnold begged for Maria’s forgiveness, she was completely finished with their relationship and filed for divorce that year. In 2018, TMZ reported that the couple had yet to finalize their split because they were still working out the finer details regarding their $400 million estate. When they got married, they never signed a pre-nup
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Following her split from Arnold, Maria was romantically linked to the political strategist for Arnold’s 2006 reelection campaign, Matthew Dowd. While the pair was reportedly still together in 2020, it seems like she’s currently single.
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After putting her career on hold during Schwarzenegger’s political venture, Maria returned to first love, journalism, and has been thriving ever since. After Arnold finished his second term, she rejoined NBC as a special correspondent to report on “women’s evolving experiences in the United States.” She earned two Emmys as the executive producer of The Alzheimer’s Project in 2009. Most recently, in 2018, she and daughter Christina co-executive produced Take Your Pills, a documentary about psychostimulant medications.
