MARLA AND JOHN POLOS are shown here on their wedding day back on Feb. 15, 1969. The couple resides in Battle Ground and has two children and four granddaughters.
BATTLE GROUND – Things don’t always work out the way people envision. This is the way that Battle Ground resident John Polos looks at things when he recalls the story of how he met and married his wife, Marla.
When John met Marla Gutzman back in 1966 in Santa Rosa, CA, at the sports car club that he joined, she was dating another guy named Charlie. Marla took on the role of navigator for John when he participated in a rally of the sports car club, and several months later they met up again.
As John describes it, Marla broke up with Charlie, and within a year, John and Marla were married.
John was 26 and Marla was 19 when the two officially tied the knot. John said he went and bought Marla a ring and then asked her folks if he could marry her.
“I went to her dad and he was actually looking in the refrigerator at the time, and I leaned on the door and said, ‘can I marry your daughter’ and I accidentally closed his head in the door,” John recalled. “He said, ‘you gotta let me get my head out of the door first.’”
They had a big wedding at Santa Rosa Catholic Church on Feb. 15, 1969, and later had two children who both attended Battle Ground High School. Though they didn’t have a traditional honeymoon, John and Marla did travel from Santa Rosa to Portland right after their wedding, which John said they considered to be “kind of” their honeymoon.
John took on a job in Portland and the couple traveled to the Pacific Northwest area, later relocating to Battle Ground. John currently works as a substitute teacher in the Battle Ground School District, mostly teaching math and science.
John is now 73 and Marla is 66, and they now have four granddaughters.
