Maria Shriver Biography

Maria Shriver is a veteran TV news reporter, former First Lady of California, and a member of the prominent Kennedy family. She’s the daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver, the niece of president John Kennedy and the granddaughter of Joseph Kennedy.

Maria Shriver graduated from Georgetown University in 1977 and began working at Philadelphia TV station KYW the same year. By 1983 she had become a national reporter at CBS News; she later moved to NBC, where she anchored a variety of news programs and specials as well as covering presidential races and other stories.

Shriver married action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger on April 26, 1986; the match was considered somewhat ironic, as Schwarzenegger was a staunch Republican and the Kennedy clan firmly Democratic. Maria Shriver supported her husband in his successful run for California governor in 2003; Schwarzenegger replaced Gray Davis after a special recall election in October of that year, and he was reelected in 2007. She served as First Lady of California until 2011, when Schwarzenegger’s second term ended.

In May of 2011, Shriver and Schwarzenegger announced that they had separated; their divorce finally became official a decade later, in December of 2021. Maria Shriver is the author of the self-help book Ten Things I Wish I’d Known – Before I Went Into the Real World (2000) and a children’s book about disabilities, What’s Wrong With Timmy? (2001).