Call me silly, but I didn’t see this one coming. Yesterday, it was announced that journalist Maria Shriver and the former governator Arnold Schwarzenegger are calling it quits.
The couple has been married for 25 years, but they’ve been together even longer than that. They were introduced by Tom Brokaw in 1977. After about nine years of dating, the seemingly unusual couple married on April 26, 1986 in Hyannis, Massachusetts.
They seemed like an odd couple because at the time, Schwarzenegger was a body builder turned actor who supported the Republican Party. Shriver, daughter of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, was a budding journalist and a staunch Democrat. She was, after all, a Kennedy.
Still the couple seemed happy. The marriage produced four children – Katherine, Christina, Patrick, and Christopher – and Shriver even stuck by Schwarzenegger as he did a stint as California’s governor from 2003 until 2011.
Schwarzenegger had said the key to a good marriage was love and respect. “If you have the ultimate love for your wife and she has it for you, I think you have a great head start … That’s not to say it won’t be difficult sometimes. You go through your ups and downs but you work through it,” he once said.
Rumors are that the couple had been spending time apart and just grew apart. It appears to very be amicable with no signs of cheating. Schwarzenegger released a statement yesterday which read, “I just talked to Maria an hour ago before I came here, and we both were saying the same thing — we’re amazed and extremely blessed to be surrounded by so many wonderful people and so many wonderful friends. We both love each other very much, and we’re very fortunate that we have four extraordinary children, and we are taking one day at a time.”
With the governorship and marriage behind him now, Schwarzenegger is looking to return to the big screen. In fact, PEOPLE reported not long ago that he has signed on to three movies – Cry Macho, The Last Stand, and another sequel to the Terminator franchise.