Maria Owings Shriver (/ˈʃraɪvər/; born November 6, 1955) is an American journalist and activist. She is the former First Lady of California, and the ex-wife of former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. She has received a Peabody Award and was co-anchor for NBC's Emmy-winning coverage of the 1988 Summer Olympics. As executive producer of The Alzheimer's Project, Shriver earned two Emmy Awards and an Academy of Television Arts & Sciences award for developing a "television show with a conscience". She is a member of the Kennedy family (her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, was a sister of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Ted Kennedy). Shriver is currently a special anchor and correspondent for NBC News.
Shriver was born in Chicago, Illinois. A Roman Catholic of German descent through her father and Irish descent through her mother, with smaller amounts of English, Scottish, French Huguenot, and Dutch ancestry, she is the second child and only daughter of the politician Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Shriver is the niece of United States President John F. Kennedy, U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy and five other siblings. Shriver attended Westland Middle School in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., and graduated in 1973 from Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda. She attended Manhattanville College for two years, then transferred and went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree in American studies from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in June 1977.