Bodybuilding legend Arnold Schwarzenegger has a larger-than-life personality, charming everyone he meets. In 1986, Schwarzenegger married Maria Shriver, a journalist and author, and a descendant of the Kennedy family. They stayed together for 25 years. In 2011, the power couple decided to get separated.

Before their divorce, however, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver had an affectionate relationship. They showered each other with expensive presents, and Peter Kent recently detailed an anecdote proving the same.

Arnold Schwarzenegger received an expensive gift from his ex-wife

Peter Kent served as the bodybuilder’s stunt double in his many action films for about 15 years. Talking to Peter McCully on the Off The Page podcast, he explained how he shared Arnold Schwarzenegger’s love for cigars. The Terminator star introduced him to Cuban cigars even though they are illegal in the United States.

 

And once, Maria Shriver brought back an astoundingly illegal and expensive gift for Schwarzenegger. “His wife, Maria Shriver, went to interview Fidel Castro in Cuba on Arnold’s private jet. Back when you weren’t even supposed to go to Cuba,” Kent said. The former President of Cuba is a known cigar aficionado and started smoking cigars at 15.

“Fidel apparently had been told by his doctor that he couldn’t smoke cigars anymore. He was supposed to stop,” narrated Peter Kent. Naturally, with her husband being a great lover of the product, Shriver knew what would make for an exciting present.

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“They were called Trinidad, and they were his private band. So four boxes of Trinidads came in. You can imagine the value of those cigars. Not only were they expensive cigars to begin with, but they were from Fidel’s private stock,” he concluded. Kent also shared that he got to try a few of those himself.

Schwarzenegger tried his first cigar when he met Shriver

The seven-time Mr. Olympia champion, Arnold Schwarzenegger, achieved his lifelong dream of moving to America in 1968 by leveraging his bodybuilding career. The Austrian-American, who became a big cigar enthusiast, hadn’t smoked a real one until he met his ex-wife Maria Shriver.

“I smoked little Virginians when I went to Munich as a bodybuilder,” he told Cigar Aficionado in their Summer 96 issue, “but I didn’t smoke a real cigar until 1977 when I met Maria.” The two met at the Kennedys’ pro-celebrity tennis tournament, where Sargent Shriver, Maria’s father, introduced him to cigars.

And though Shriver bought him four boxes of Trinidads, she doesn’t entirely approve of his habit. It is, after all, a health hazard. He said, at the time, “This is a big advantage in life. Your wife can’t complain about your cigars. You can always say, ‘Look, honey, your father wouldn’t have introduced me to something that’s bad.’”

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