Published: August 13, 2008 11:54 pm         

Downtown restaurant Marilyn K’s will close Oct. 31

The first thing you notice when entering Marilyn K’s is a Health Department report with a big smiley face on it that means the restaurant is exceptionally clean.

If you’re lucky, the next thing you see is an empty table. You sit and may order the most popular item on the menu, the chicken salad sandwich.

Enjoy that experience while you can because Marilyn K’s, an icon of downtown dining, will close its doors as a public restaurant Oct. 31, when owner Marilyn Bell retires.

When she retires, Continental Resources will turn the cafe, located in Continental Tower North, into a cafeteria for employees and it will be closed to the public. That is one of many changes to be made in the building to accommodate Continental’s rapid growth.

Bell has been in the food business since she was a young girl and has owned Marilyn K’s since 1996. It is called Marilyn K’s because when she opened she did not have a name for the business. Her middle name is Kay and it stuck.

Her first job was at Lahoma Drive-In at age 14. She worked in Katy’s Pantry through high school, and learned to cook there. Later, she worked in the Union Equity cafeteria.

In 1996, Ken Arnold, whom she had known when he worked for Union Equity, called her and said Continental Resources was tired of operating the cafe in its building and asked Marilyn to take it over.

“They’ve been really good to me. I couldn’t ask for better people to work with,” she said.

In the beginning, she was open for breakfast, but that business eventually did not pay for itself and she began opening for lunch only. In addition to her cafe, Marilyn K’s has done all the catering for events held in the building, including Rotary Club, which meets there every Monday. She will continue to honor catering obligations through May 2009. She also urged those with gift certificates or coupons to use them by Oct. 31.

“I’ve also got five employees who will be looking for jobs,” she said.

Two of those employees have been with her a long time. Missy Arnett has worked at the restaurant for 11 years, and her sister, Trina Coomes, for 12 years.

Bell has had a good time in the restaurant business. She likes the atmosphere and likes seeing people enjoying themselves.

“I enjoy it. I like feeding people and making them happy. It’s special. I’ve always enjoyed what I do,” she said.

Bell said the restaurant is a lot of hard work for a small amount of money, but she wants to do it. Although she likes to cook, she concentrates more on the business side of the operation.

There have been a lot of interesting times at the restaurant. During a power outage one day, Misty wrapped a portable “snake light” around her neck and continued to cook.

“We couldn’t make coffee, but we had dinner,” she said.

Once when she was catering a wedding in the building, a fire alarm malfunctioned and the fire and police departments evacuated the building until they found the problem.

“The bride was crying until the firefighters got her to stand on top of the truck for a picture. Everyone came back after a while,” she said.

One day, the catwalk blew off the building and nearly struck Arnett as she walked into the restaurant. Another time, the oven backfired and burned some of Bell’s hair off.

Bell said she has the best crew she has ever had and plans to do business as usual until she closes. After that, she will take a couple of weeks to clean up and then will have a sale of some of the items she has collected during the years and retire.

Retirement will be something different for her. Bells’ husband already is retired and they like to camp. She said they will not be limited in the time they spend camping from now on.

Looking back on her years in business, Bell said she has catered hundreds of events. She catered a wedding every weekend, she has catered the Rotary Club noon meetings in the building since 1999 and she has catered many other meetings in the building.

The news of her retirement has been a shock to some of her customers. One woman cried when she told her.

Bell has worked well with Continental Resources, which owns the building. She credited the company with providing her a lot of help over the years.

“Continental has been good to me, they’ve probably helped me survive,” she said.