Maria Shriver is an American journalist, author and member of the Kennedy family who served as the First Lady of California. Maria Shriver was born on November 6, 1955, in Chicago, Illinois, the second child of politician Sargent Shriver and activist Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Shriver is a niece of United States President John F. Kennedy and is Roman Catholic. Shriver attended Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda, Maryland and then went to Manhattanville College for two years. Shriver then transferred to Georgetown University where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in American Studies.

Shriver began her journalism career in Philadelphia where she co-anchored The CBS Morning News with Forrest Sawyer. In April of 1986, Maria Shriver married body builder and film star Arnold Schwarzenegger in Hyannis, Massachusetts. The couple has four children, Katherine Eunice, Patrick Arnold, Christopher Sargent Shriver, and Christina Maria Aurelia. The couple separated in 2011 when Schwarzenegger publicly admitted to fathering a child out of wedlock with a longtime member of their household staff. As executive producer of The Alzheimer's Project, Shriver earned two Emmy Awards and an Academy of Television Arts & Sciences award. Shrive is a member of the International Board of the Special Olympics, which was founded in 1968 by her mother.