Arnold Schwarzenegger - Total Recall - My Unbelievably True Life Story

Seeing so many new faces didn’t detract from the wedding; it made the event even more colorful for me. It was an opportunity to meet a lot of people, full of fun, full of life, full of toasts. Everyone was upbeat. Maria’s family and relatives were extremely gracious. My friends kept coming up and saying, “This is amazing, Arnold.” They had a really good time.

My mother already knew Eunice and Sarge—she’d met them during her annual spring visits. Sarge was always joking with her. He loved Germany and Austria, spoke German to her, and knew just how to make her feel good. He would sing beer-hall songs to her and invite her to waltz. They’d spin through the living room. He always pointed out what a great job she’d done raising me. He would talk about details of Austria, different towns he’d traveled through on his bicycle, and about The Sound of Music, the history of Austria, when the Russians left and Austria became independent, and what a great job of rebuilding the Austrians had done, how he loved the wines, how he loved the opera. My mom would say afterward, “Such a nice man. So educated. How little I know about America compared to how much he knows about Austria!” Sarge was a charmer. He was a professional.

At the wedding, she met Teddy and Jackie too. They were incredibly gracious. Teddy offered his arm and walked her out of the church after the ceremony. He was very good at important little gestures like that; taking care of the family this way was his specialty. Jackie made a fuss over my mom when we went to her house the afternoon before the wedding. Her daughter, Caroline, as maid of honor, was hosting a lunch there for the bridesmaids, groomsmen, and close family—thirty people in all. Not just my mom, but everyone meeting Jackie for the first time walked away impressed, just as I had been when we’d first been introduced at Elaine’s. She talked to everybody, really sat down and engaged in conversation. Having watched her through the years, I could see why she’d been such a popular First Lady. She had an amazing ability to ask questions that would make you wonder, “How did she know that?” She always made my friends feel welcome when I brought them to Hyannis. My mother fell in love with her too.

My mom gave the rehearsal dinner that night at the Hyannisport Club, a golf club overlooking the Shrivers’ house. We billed the evening as an Austrian clambake, and mixing the American and Austrian cultures was the theme. We put out red-and-white-checked tablecloths from an Austrian beer hall, and I showed up wearing a traditional Tyrolean outfit and hat. The menu was a combination of Austrian and American food, with a main course of Wiener schnitzel and lobsters, and a dessert of Sacher torte and strawberry shortcake.

There were great toasts that evening. The toasts on Maria’s side were about her and how great she is and how I’d benefit from being her husband. From my side it was the opposite: what a great guy and perfect human being I am, and how she’d benefit from that. Together we’d make a perfect couple. The Kennedys really know how to celebrate these moments. They all jump in and have a great time. That was very entertaining for the outsiders. And for my friends, it was the first time being exposed to that world. They’d never seen that many toasts and such a lively audience. I took the occasion to give Eunice and Sarge their copy of Warhol’s portrait of Maria. “I’m not really taking her away, because I am giving this to you so you will always have her,” I told them. And then I promised all the guests, “I love her, and I will always take care of her. Nobody should worry.” Sargent put in his two cents: he had this rap about being the luckiest man in the world. “You’re the luckiest guy in the world to marry Maria, but I’m the luckiest son of a bitch alive to be with Eunice. We’re both lucky!”

The wedding was held at St. Francis Xavier, a white clapboard church in the middle of Hyannis, a couple of miles away. It was a Saturday morning, and literally thousands of well-wishers were waiting outside as we arrived. I rolled down the window of the limo and waved to the crowds behind the barricades. There were dozens of reporters and cameras and video crews on hand too.

I loved watching Maria coming up the aisle. She looked so regal with her beautiful lace dress and long train and ten bridesmaids, but at the same time, she was radiating happiness and warmth. Everyone settled down for the formality of the nuptial Mass, during which the exchange of vows takes place about one third of the way through. When the moment came, Maria and I stood before the priest. We were about to say “I do,” when all of a sudden the back door of the church went bang!

Everyone turned around to see what was going on. The priest was staring past us and we looked over our shoulders too. There, silhouetted against the daylight in the entrance of the church, I saw a skinny guy with spiky hair and a tall black woman wearing a dyed-green mink hat: Andy Warhol and Grace Jones.

They were like gunslingers coming in through the swinging doors of a saloon in a Western movie, or at least that’s how it seemed to me because I was seeing it larger than life. I thought, “This fucking guy, I can’t believe it. Stealing the show at my wedding.” It was wonderful in a way. Andy was outrageous. Grace Jones could not do anything low-key. Maria and I were delighted that they made it, and when the priest in his sermon counseled us as a couple to have at least ten good laughs a day, we were already on our way.

There aren’t many guys who would describe their wedding reception as enriching and educational, but that’s how ours was for me. As my new father-in-law took me around to introduce me, I was again in awe of how many different worlds Sarge and Eunice had touched. “This guy ran my Peace Corps operation in Zimbabwe, which then was called Rhodesia …” “You’ll love this guy; he’s the one who took charge when there were riots in Oakland, and we put in VISTA and Head Start.”

I was in my element because I was always eager to meet as many people as possible from different fields and backgrounds. Sarge accounted for the lion’s share of the guests from politics and journalism and the business and nonprofit worlds. It was a collection of people he had worked with in the Peace Corps and the Kennedy administration, in politics over the years, in Moscow on his trade mission there, in Paris during his ambassadorship, and on and on. Another guy he wanted me to meet was from Chicago: “Unbelievable, Arnold, an extraordinary human being. He single-handedly managed the entire legal aid program I started, and now people who have no money can get legal advice and representation.” This went on all day long. “Arnold, come over here! Let me introduce you to this friend from Hamburg. Ha ha, you’ll love talking to him—he cut this deal with the Russians …”

When it came time to dance, Maria ditched her pumps and switched to white sneakers to protect a toe she’d broken the previous week. Then as Peter Duchin and his orchestra struck up a waltz, she wound the train of her dress five or six times around her wrist, and we showed off the steps we’d been practicing, to much applause. My friend Jim Lorimer from Columbus had arranged for us to take ballroom dancing lessons. Those helped us a lot.

The cake was a copy of the legendary one at Eunice and Sarge’s wedding: a carrot cake with white icing and eight tiers, standing more than four feet tall and weighing 625 pounds. Its appearance started another round of toasts.

I made one remark at the reception that seemed like a minor thing at the time but would dog me for years. It involved Kurt Waldheim, the former secretary general of the United Nations, who was running for president of Austria. We’d invited him and other leaders, including President Reagan, the president of Ireland—even the Pope. We didn’t think they’d come, but it would be great to get back letters from them for the wedding album. I’d endorsed Waldheim as a leader of the conservative People’s Party with which I’d been associated since my weight-lifting days in Graz.