“Home” Was Always Each Other

Mike was suiting up for football practice at Castlemont High School in 1959 when he ran into a friend. “He asked what I’d done that day, and I told him I’d met the girl I was going to marry,” Mike recalls. The friend was skeptical, but another boy standing and listening nearby was indignant—that girl, Marian, happened to be his girlfriend.

Mike’s response was swift and certain: “Not for long.”

Mike went directly to their geometry teacher with a request: Stop rotating the classroom seating every six weeks. “I intend to marry Marian,” Mike explained to the teacher, “and if you keep moving us around, I won’t be able to talk to her.” The teacher made a compromise—he’d still rotate the seats but would always keep Mike and Marian within orbit of each other.

Marian remembers the desk maneuvers with some amusement: “I’d be behind him, next to him, kitty-corner, whatever. But I was always right around him. I thought, ‘Oh, this is interesting.’”

Still, it took two years for Marian to agree to a date. “I saw him with too many other girls,” she says. “I wasn’t going to be one of the many.”

In the Water

While Mike was playing football, Marian was swimming—and had been since she was 6 years old.

“There was a pool near my house that my parents didn’t want me to drown in,” she explains. Her mother enrolled her at the Y, where she took classes until her coach ran out of things to teach her. The coach had a synchronized swimming class on the side and invited Marian to join. “I decided, ‘Hey, I really like doing these ballet legs in the water. This is fun.’”

From there she came under the coaching of Tom Lord at Fremont High, whose sister was a national synchronized swimming champ. Marian and the team practiced in the morning before classes and returned in the evenings from seven to nine, with additional weekend sessions during competition season.

Marian went on to demonstrate synchronized swimming at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, part of an international effort to establish the sport as an official Olympic event. Three years later, at the 1963 Pan American Games in São Paulo, she won gold with her team and silver in the duet alongside her partner, Marsha Blixt. “Just being in São Paulo during Carnival was an amazing experience,” she says. She retired from competition not long after.

Building a Life Together

Marian and Mike married in 1966, the first weekend after Mike finished his last final at UC Berkeley. He entered Bank of America’s international training program, and Marian began teaching early childhood education. They lived in Piedmont until Mike’s first overseas assignment took them to Guayaquil, Ecuador.

“It was definitely a big change and a very interesting experience,” Marian says.

From there, Mike’s career took them through Panama, Venezuela, two stints in California, and Japan—21 homes over the course of their marriage.

Marian’s teaching moved with them. She worked in preschools and daycare centers, arranging her hours to be home when their two young sons returned from school.

Mike rose to vice chairman at Bank of America and retired at 50—later than he’d wanted but earlier than the work would allow. Each subsequent retirement lasted until the next opportunity knocked: a private equity firm, a corporate turnaround in Japan, a commercial real estate business, and eventually a nine-year advisory role with the San Francisco 49ers.

“He worked hard,” says Marian. “He always gave it the extra effort and always dealt with people who were reliable and trustworthy and honorable. Living overseas—Ecuador and Venezuela and Japan—it’s been a great life. Lots of adventures, and lots of wonderful friends along the way.”

The Easy Decision

For years, Mike and Marian maintained homes in Pebble Beach and Hawaii, alternating between them every two weeks. One morning, they looked at each other and decided they’d had enough.

“You get on a plane, you arrive, and the first thing you have to do is figure out what’s not working and then get it fixed,” Mike says. “It seemed it was time to simplify our lives—that it would be nice to have a place where we didn’t have to do anything.”

He researched options and brought Marian to see Coterie Cathedral Hill. She saw the corner apartment with views over Van Ness, the rooftop pool, the fitness center, the walkable neighborhood. The decision, she says, was easy.

At Home at Coterie

Most mornings now, Mike heads to the fitness center while Marian goes to the pool. She swims for about an hour, doing her hundred laps, occasionally trying a stunt just for the feel of it.

“It’s really just pretty relaxing,” she says. “Mike’s done his workout by the time I’ve done mine, and we get dressed and go off to breakfast.”

The building’s management of daily life is of particular delight to Mike and Marian.

“Something doesn’t work, I just pick up the phone,” Mike says. “My goodness, people miraculously appear, fix it, and disappear.” The neighborhood is similarly easy: a 20-minute walk to Union Square, favorite restaurants along Van Ness, theaters along the way. Marian and Mike have joined community excursions and made new friends.

“I spent so much of my life in hotels. This is sort of like staying at the Four Seasons. Everything I could get at the Four Seasons, I can get here.” He adds, almost as an afterthought, “And family’s very close. That’s been great.”

Marian agrees. “We’re really happy here. It’s home. It’s going to be home, hopefully for a long time.”