Maria Shriver

Maria Shriver is a veteran TV news reporter 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.) 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. She married action movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger on 26 April 1986; the match was considered somewhat ironic, as Schwarzenegger was a staunch Republican and the Kennedy clan firmly Democratic. (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.) 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).

Extra credit: Shriver and Schwarzenegger have four children: Katherine Eunice (b. 1989), Christina Maria Aurelia (b. 1991), Patrick Arnold (b. 1993) and Christopher Sargent Shriver (b. 1997)... In February of 2004, Shriver announced she would step down from her full-time job with NBC News to focus on her role as First Lady of California, though she intended to continue working on occasional TV projects.