Maria Owings Shriver (pronounced /ˈʃraɪvər/; born November 6, 1955) is an award-winning American journalist and author, and the First Lady of California. She is married to actor and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and is a member of the Kennedy family.

Shriver was born in Chicago, Illinois. A Roman Catholic of German descent through her father and Irish descent through her mother, she is the second child and only daughter of the politician Sargent Shriver and Eunice Kennedy Shriver. Eunice was the sister 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, DC, and graduated in 1973 from Stone Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Bethesda. She received a bachelor of arts degree in American studies from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., in June 1977.

In her book Ten Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Went Out Into The Real World (2000), Shriver says that she became passionate about broadcast journalism after being sent to the back of the campaign plane with the press corps when volunteering for her father's 1972 U.S. vice-presidential race, calling these orders "the best thing that ever happened to me" After her journalism career began with KYW-TV in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she co-anchored the CBS Morning News with Forrest Sawyer from 1985 until 1987, co-anchored NBC News's Sunday Today and weekend editions of NBC Nightly News from 1987 until 1989, and was a contributing anchor on Dateline NBC from 1989 until 2004. In August 2003, Shriver took an unpaid leave of absence from NBC News when her husband became a candidate in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election.