‘She More Than Deserves Those Residuals’: Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Ex-Wife Maria Shriver Dishes on Life After ‘Brutal’ Divorce Triggered by Actor’s Love Affair with Nanny
Maria Shriver, 69, has learned a lot about love in the years since divorcing her ex-husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, 77.
She and the former California governor tied the knot in 1986 and stayed married for 25 years.
In a new episode of the “Jamie Kern Lima Show,” Shriver described herself as a “frustrated matchmaker” who has yet to find love again, though she has not ruled out the possibility.
“I’m a big believer in relationships and love,” she told Lima.
The 25-year marriage ended after the “Terminator” star confessed to fathering a son, Joseph Baena, with one of the family’s longtime housekeepers, Mildred Patricia Baena, in 1997.
Shriver filed to end the union in 2011 when their split was announced. She and the Austria-born bodybuilder share adult children Katherine, Christina, Patrick, and Christopher.
The former CBS and NBC news anchor’s kids have jokingly pitched the idea of trying out dating apps, but Shriver has shut them down.
“I’m like, ‘Absolutely not!’” she said. “I’m good. I’m finally good on my own, and that’s taken a tremendous amount. I have a beautiful life that I’m deeply grateful for, and that feels really good and really full and full of love.”
In April, Shriver released the memoir “I Am Maria,” which included her vulnerable perspective about the “brutal” divorce. “It broke my heart, it broke my spirit, it broke what was left of me,” Schwarzenegger’s ex-wife wrote.
“Without my marriage, my parents, a job — the dam of my lifelong capital-D Denial just blew apart,” she added.
As for the former action star, in 2023, Schwarzenegger called the affair with his nanny his biggest “f—k up.”
“I am going to have to live with it the rest of my life … This is a major failure. I had failures in the past in my career, but this is a whole different ball game, dimension of failure,” he said in the Netflix docuseries “Arnold.”
Last month, the actor shared a more lighthearted remark about his ex. While promoting “The Man With the Bag,” he joked that his 1996 film “Jingle All the Way” keeps her calling “about the residual.”
A reaction to the quip read, “She more than deserves those residuals. She didn’t bang the gardener and have his baby.” Another critic commented, “I think a woman can forgive an affair but not the fact of fathering someone else’s child while married.”
A third said, “Maria Shriver has always been a class act. She’s a fantastic person who has always cared about others. Certainly cannot say the same about her ex-husband.”
Unlike Shriver, Arnold found love with physical therapist Heather Milligan, 50, whom he began dating in 2013, two years after the divorce filing. They connected a year prior when she helped the actor rehabilitate from a shoulder surgery.