Maria Shriver

About Maria Shriver

Maria Owings Shriver (pronounced: /'ʃɹaɪvɚ/; born November 6, 1955) is an award-winning American journalist from the Kennedy Family, a prolific author and First Lady of California. Her husband is Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Shriver was born in Chicago, Illinois. A Roman Catholic of Irish and German descent,[citation needed] she was the second child and only daughter of the politician Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy Shriver; Eunice is the sister of the former President John F. Kennedy. She attended Westland Middle School in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, DC. Maria also attended Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland being in the class of 1973. Shriver received a B.A. degree in American Studies from Georgetown University in June 1977.

In her book Ten Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Went Out Into The Real World, Shriver says that she became passionate about broadcast journalism after being sent to the back of the campaign plane with the press corps when volunteering for her father's vice presidential race, calling these orders "the best thing that ever happened to me." After her journalism career began with KYW-TV in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she co-anchored the CBS Morning News with Forrest Sawyer from 1985 until 1987, co-anchored Sunday Today and weekend editions of NBC Nightly News from 1987 until 1989, and was a contributing anchor on Dateline NBC from 1989 until 2004. In August 2003, Shriver took an unpaid leave of absence from NBC News when her husband became a candidate in the 2003 California recall.