Maria Shriver arrived beaming at a birthday dinner in Los Angeles this week for her ex-husband Arnold Schwarzenegger, who turned 79, more than a decade after a cheating scandal destroyed their marriage.
Shriver, 70, wore a canary yellow dress and carried a large handbag as she made her way into the gathering. Schwarzenegger appeared in good spirits as he mingled with their daughters and daughter-in-law Abby Champion, the wife of their son Patrick.
The two married in April 1986 in Hyannis, Massachusetts, near the Kennedy compound, at a ceremony attended by John F Kennedy Jr and his mother Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. They have four children together: Katherine, 36, Christina, 35, Patrick, 32, and Christopher, 28.
Their marriage unraveled in 2011 when it emerged that Schwarzenegger had fathered a child with the family's housekeeper, Mildred "Patty" Baena. The son, Joseph Baena, 28, was revealed to be Schwarzenegger's the day after Schwarzenegger left office as Governor of California. Until that year, Joseph himself had believed he was the son of Patty's ex-husband, Rogelio Baena.
Patty, who worked for Schwarzenegger for 20 years, later said in a Hello! magazine interview that Joseph's reaction on learning the truth was to say "Cool!" She said their physical resemblance "became more apparent" over the years, and that Shriver eventually confronted her directly about the boy's paternity. Patty said Shriver "cried with me and told me to get off my knees" when she confessed, and that the two women held each other.
Shriver filed for divorce on July 1, 2011, and the split was finalized a decade later. Despite the circumstances, the two are said to have maintained an amicable co-parenting relationship.
A long backstory
Shriver came from a prominent political family. Her maternal uncle was President John F Kennedy, and her father Sargent Shriver was a senior Democratic Party figure who led Lyndon B Johnson's war on poverty program.
Schwarzenegger, born near Graz, Austria, first made his name as a bodybuilder, earning the nickname the "Austrian Oak," before transitioning to acting. He and Shriver met in 1977 while he was still in a relationship with Beverly Hills hairdresser Sue Moray. Schwarzenegger later also had what his Red Sonja co-star Brigitte Nielsen described in her memoir as an "outrageous affair" with Nielsen during the years he and Shriver dated.
Shriver later reflected on why she was drawn to Schwarzenegger. She said everyone had expected her to marry someone like a John Kerry, a preppy Harvard or Yale man. She said she had been around those men her whole life and did not want to marry them. She described Schwarzenegger as "an explosion of fresh air."
By the time they married, Schwarzenegger had become a Hollywood star through films including Conan the Barbarian and The Terminator. The couple maintained the image of a stable showbiz marriage through his time as California's governor.
After the split
The year after Shriver left him, Schwarzenegger began a relationship with Heather Milligan, a physical therapist 27 years his junior. They met after he had shoulder surgery, on a recommendation from Sylvester Stallone. The two have remained together since.
Schwarzenegger has also maintained a relationship with Joseph, who has followed his father into bodybuilding. Joseph told People that as long as you are doing what you want to do, making your father proud comes naturally, and he noted that "maybe those guys don't have such nice dads."
However, a source told Page Six in 2023 that Schwarzenegger's four children with Shriver have kept their distance from Joseph and direct their feelings about their father's affair toward the son it produced.
