“That Was Even Worse”: Due to Mother Eunice Kennedy, Maria Shriver Declined Arnold Schwarzenegger’s First Marriage Proposal, Revealed in Total Recall

Arnold Schwarzenegger and his ex-wife Maria Shriver tied the knot in 1986. Shriver hailed from a family which was political royalty in America. Her father, Sargent Shriver, a former United States Ambassador to France, had played a pivotal role in establishing the Peace Corps and Special Olympics. While her mother, Eunice Kennedy, was a social worker and John F. Kennedy’s cousin.

While Arnie and Maria Shriver had rented a house for themselves, Shriver’s conservative parents presented a few challenges for the couple. So when Schwarzenegger first proposed to Shriver, she didn’t react favorably. By 1982, the seven-time Mr. Olympia and then-rookie-actor, had realized that Maria Shriver was “the ideal woman,” for him. Before leaving for Spain to film Conan the Barbarian, the bodybuilding icon wanted Shriver to travel with him, and that’s when he proposed.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver had different ideas about their future together

The actor recounted the incident in Chapter 13 of his autobiography. At first, the former Mr. Olympia asked his journalist girlfriend to travel to Spain with him. “I invited Maria to come to the set and hang out with me, or at least come visit for a month at a time,” The Austrian Oak revealed in his book.

However, Shriver said she couldn’t accompany him to Spain because her mother and father would disapprove. The Terminator actor revealed it would bother Eunice and Sargent Shriver knowing their daughter would be “on location and spending nights together because we weren’t married.”

“Well, then why don’t we get married?” Schwarzenegger told Shriver. However, his surprise proposal didn’t go as planned. “That was even worse. She kind of flipped out about how Eunice would react,” he wrote in his book, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story.

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“‘No, no, no,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘I could never go to her with that.'” Schwarzenegger revealed. However, the renowned journalist had good reason for her dramatic reaction.

Following her mother’s footsteps

Belonging to a family of public servants, Maria Shriver had grown up seeing people around her accomplish great things. Her mother, Eunice Kenney Shriver, got “married late—so late that it was part of the family lore.” JFK’s cousin graduated from Stanford during the Second World War. Before marrying Sargent Shriver, she worked in the State and Justice Departments. She also did social work at the West Virginia federal prison camp for women, and a women’s shelter in Chicago. 

Like her mother, Maria Shriver also had “a lot she wanted to do first.” So when the former Mr. Universe proposed to marry at 25, she declined. Like Eunice Kennedy, Maria Shriver wanted to wait until 30 before marrying Schwarzenegger.

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Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver began dating in 1977 and spent eight years together before tying the knot in 1986. What do you think of Schwarzenegger’s proposal and Shriver’s subsequent reaction? Let us know in the comments below.