After 25 years of marriage Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver have announced their separation.
The pair, who met in 1977 and married at the Kennedy compound in 1986, are now “living apart, while we work on the future of our relationship”, they said in a joint media release.
Despite their long relationship, it seems the pair were a somewhat unlikely match from the beginning, People magazine reported.
Maria, now 55, was a TV journalist, a Democrat and a member of the Kennedy family. Arnold, 63, was an Austrian-born bodybuilder and action movie star who went on to become a Republican governor of California.
When Arnold decided to run for governor, Maria revealed on the Oprah Winfrey Show that she wasn’t exactly thrilled at his decision.
“When he told me he was interested, I said I’d spent my whole life getting away from politics,” she said in a 2008 episode.
“I realised that if I said no, I’d be stopping my husband from achieving his dream. It was a catch-22. So I told Arnold that he should do what he wanted to do … Two months later, I was the Democratic first lady of a Republican administration.”
Despite her doubts, Maria always stood by her husband in his political role, including when allegations of improper behaviour towards women were made against him during his campaign trail.
She has also been praised as a shining example as California’s first lady after she left her job at Dateline to support her husband, the Los Angeles Times reported.
But privately the couple’s life wasn’t so idyllic. The pair’s four children, aged 14, 18, 20 and 21, grew apart and have remained apart.
The pair’s political differences also became apparent when Maria endorsed Democrat candidate Barack Obama and Schwarzenegger backed Republican John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.
In March this year, Maria spoke in a video posted on YouTube about how she has handled transition in her life.
“As you know, transitions are not easy. I’d love to get your advice on how you’ve handled transitions in your own life,” she said.
“It’s so stressful to not know what you’re doing next. People ask you what are you doing and then they can’t believe that you don’t know what you’re doing.”
The pair are also reportedly moving in different directions in their lives with Arnold preparing to return to acting. Maria, however, is still dealing with the losses of her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, her father, Sargent Shriver, and her uncle, former Massachusetts senator Edward M Kennedy.
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