Meredith Schwarz is the high school sweetheart and first wife of Pete Hegseth, whom she married in 2004 at the Cathedral of Saint Paul in Minnesota and divorced in December 2008 in Hennepin County, citing irretrievable breakdown due to her husband's infidelity, with the divorce finalized in 2009. A business professional, she graduated from Forest Lake Area High School in the suburbs of Minneapolis in 1999, where she was involved in student council and nominated for homecoming queen; according to her yearbook, she was bound for Barnard College. She worked as an investment banker at J.P. Morgan in New York from approximately May 2003 to September 2008, after which she quit her job, sold her New York apartment, and relocated to Minneapolis to take a position at General Mills. Raised Roman Catholic, she has maintained a low public profile since the divorce, avoiding social media and media attention.