For nearly 25 years, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver were a Hollywood and political power couple.
The Terminator star and the journalist tied the knot in April 1986, nearly nine years after they first met at a tennis tournament. After welcoming four children together, the pair announced their split in May 2011 amid reports of infidelity. (Schwarzenegger eventually admitted that he fathered son Joseph Baena with the family’s former housekeeper, Mildred “Patty” Baena, while he was still married to the Illinois native.)
“I had personal setbacks, but this was, without any doubt, the biggest setback and the biggest failure,” the former governor of California told Howard Stern on his SiriusXM radio show in June 2015. “Without any doubt. Not only failure, but you feel like, ‘I’m to blame for it. It was me that screwed up.’ And you can’t point the finger at anyone else. So yeah, I was disappointed in it. It’s always easy to be smart in hindsight. The thing was how do you make the best of that situation?”
He continued: “[Going to couple’s therapy] was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. That guy was so full of s—t. He said more crap and more nonsense. It was absolutely counterproductive to our future relationship. … Maria talked me into it. I went, and I felt instinctively maybe I shouldn’t go because I know I screwed up. I don’t have to go through anyone to have to explain to me anything. I apologized to Maria. I apologized to the kids.”
Following their split, the Austria native has continued to praise his former spouse as a coparent as they jointly raised children Katherine Schwarzenegger, Christina Schwarzenegger, Patrick Schwarzenegger and Christopher Schwarzenegger.
“Luckily, Maria has been a terrific mother,” the Jingle All the Way star previously told Extra in 2012. “We work together even though we’re going through a divorce. … We make sure that the kids grow up to be really good human beings.”
Us Weekly confirmed in December 2021 that the pair’s divorce paperwork was finalized after 10 years.
“I grew up in a very strict Catholic household, and I was raised with a judgmental God, and I don’t believe in that anymore,” Shriver previously told Access Hollywood in March 2018 about how her divorce shifted her perspective. “I believe all religion is based in love, and the less judgmental we are across our life, the better we are.”
The now-exes eventually reached a settlement in their divorce in June 2022 when Shriver was awarded half of the actor’s retirement accounts per a court filing at the time.
Scroll below to revisit Arnold and the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement founder’s complete relationship timeline: