Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

I had to be more creative. I knew my wife would be telling the story to my kids someday, and my kids would be telling their kids, so I had to come up with something unique. There were many options. It could have been on an African safari or on the Eiffel Tower, except that going to Paris would be a dead giveaway. The challenge was to make it truly a surprise.

“Maybe I should take her to Ireland,” I thought, “where she actually traces her ancestry—maybe some castle in Ireland.”

In the end I just proposed spontaneously. We were in Austria in July visiting my mom, and I took Maria out rowing on the Thalersee. This lake was where I’d grown up, where I’d played as a kid, where I’d learned to swim and won trophies for swimming, where I’d started bodybuilding, where I’d had my first date. The lake meant all of those things to me. Maria wanted to see it, since she’d heard me talk about it. It felt right to propose to her there. She started crying and hugging and was totally surprised. So it was exactly the way I envisioned it; the way it ought to play out.

After we got back to shore, of course, all kinds of questions came into her mind: “When do you think we should get married?” “When should we have an engagement party?” “When should we make the announcement?”

And she asked, “Have you talked to my dad?”

“No,” I said.

“It’s a tradition in America that you have to talk to the father and ask him.”

“Maria,” I said “do you think I’m stupid? Ask your father and he will tell your mother and your mother will blabber it to you immediately. What do you think, their loyalty is to me? You are their daughter. Or she will tell Ethel, and she will tell Bobby, and she will tell everybody in the family before you even find out. I had to have my chance to actually propose. So of course I didn’t talk to them, nobody.”

I did call her father that evening. “Normally I know I’m supposed to ask you first,” I said, “but I was not about to ask you anything because I know that you would tell Eunice and Eunice would tell Maria.”

“You’re goddam right. That’s exactly what she would have done,” said Sarge.

“So I’m just asking you now.”

He said, “Arnold, it is a great pleasure to have you as a son-in-law.” He was very, very gracious, Sargent, always.

Then I talked to Eunice and told her, and she acted very excited. But I’m sure that Maria had called her before I ever did.

We spent a lot of time with my mom. We hung out, we took her to Salzburg, and traveled around and had a great time. Then we went home to Hyannis Port. We had a little party to celebrate, with everyone sitting around the dinner table: the Shriver family, Eunice and her sister Pat, Teddy and his then wife, Joan, and many Kennedy cousins as well. They always had those long extended tables and a lot of people for dinner.

I had to tell in minute detail exactly how it came about. That was fun. They were hanging on every word and there were all these sounds: “Oh! Ahh! Fantastic!” And bursts of applause.

“You went on a rowboat! Jesus, where’d you find a damn rowboat?”

Teddy was boisterous and very loud and having a good time. “That’s amazing! Did you hear that, Pat? What would you have done if Peter had asked you to marry him in a rowboat? I know Eunice would have preferred the sailboat. She’d say, ‘A rowboat? That’s no good! I want action!’ ”

“Teddy, let Arnold finish the story.”

Everyone was asking questions.

“Tell me, Arnold, what did Maria do then?”

“What was the expression on her face?”

“What would you have done if she’d said no?”

Before I could answer, someone else said, “What do you mean, said no? Maria couldn’t wait for him to propose!”

It was this very Irish way of relishing the smallest details and turning everything into great fun.

Eventually Maria got a chance to speak. “It was so romantic,” she said. And she held up the ring for everyone to see.

In 1983, before heading to Mexico to shoot Conan the Destroyer, I celebrated becoming a U.S. citizen. Michael Montfort / interTOPICS

Jim Cameron shows how he wants my character Harry Tasker to fight his way out of a terrorist camp, on location in the Florida Keys. © 1994 Twentieth Century Fox. All Rights Reserved.