His culinary career started as a busboy and diswasher but at age 27, Graham Elliot Bowles was the nation’s youngest four-star chef. He has owned three restaurants in Chicago – Graham Elliot, a two-Michelin-star “bistronomic” restaurant, Grahamwich, and Graham Elliot Bistro.

He has competed and judged on Food Network and Fox television shows such as Cooks vs. Cons, Iron Chef America, MasterChef, and Top Chef Masters.

Since 2010, he has been cullinary director at Lollapalooza, a three-day music festival in Chicago.

Bowles lived in unit 2905 in the west tower at Marina City from 2008 to 2010.

Former White House press secretary James Brady (1940-2014) lived at Marina City from 1966 to 1973. After graduating from the University of Illinois, Brady was a lobbyist for the Illinois State Medical Society. He later worked for Thomas & James Advertising.

Single for most of his time in Chicago, Brady lived in unit 3612 in the west tower.

Shortly after the 1981 assassination attempt on President Reagan, in which Brady was severely injured, Chicago Tribune columnist Raymond Coffey recalled an incident one year in July when Brady’s wife, Sarah, wanted him to get rid of the Christmas tree. According to Coffey, Brady picked up the tree, walked to the balcony, and threw it 300 feet to Dearborn Street below.

Joe Anderson, a friend of Brady’s, who introduced Jim and Sarah to each other, says the story is probably true. “It’s so within the realm of possibility with Jim.”

Known as “The First Lady of Chicago Radio,” Yvonne Daniels (1937-1991) was the first female disc jockey at WLS Chicago. She was the daughter of jazz singer Billy Daniels. She started her radio career in Jacksonville, Illinois. In Chicago, she worked for WYNR, WCFL, and WSDM, before joining WLS in 1973. In the 1980s, she was heard on WVON, WGCI, and WNUA. She was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1995.

With her husband, Ben Williams, Daniels lived at Marina City in the 1980s and early 90s until succumbing to breast cancer on June 21, 1991. In October of that year, a stretch of Dearborn Street next to Marina City was given the honorary name of Yvonne Daniels Way.

When he heard the violin, as a boy growing up in Italy, his attention would turn from the silent film he was watching to the musicians accompanying the film. At age nine, now living in Chicago, he took violin lessons. In 1946, at age 26, Adrian Da Prato (1920-2015) joined the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and for the next 50 years played a violin made in 1710 by Pietro Giovanni Guarneri. When he retired from CSO in 1996, he had worked for seven music directors.

Da Prato was a longtime resident of Marina City, living on the 45th floor of the east tower.

He once compared an orchestra to an old bottle of wine. “It has to have a good vintage to start out with, then it reaches a point where its fullness is realized. When an orchestra works together it grows. That is the beautiful experience. It is magic. It is a great orchestra.”

Born Henry John Deutschendorf Jr., John Denver (1943-1997) and his wife, Annie, lived in unit 4707, a one-bedroom apartment on the 47th floor of the west tower. In June 1967, they took over the lease of Mike Kobluk (see below), an original member of Chad Mitchell Trio. Denver joined the trio in 1965, replacing Mitchell, who left to pursue a solo singing career.

(Above) This photograph by Mike Kobluk shows John Denver playing a guitar inside a Marina City apartment in June 1967. Seated on the sofa are, at left, Denver’s wife, Annie, and Bob Hefferan, a guitar accompanist for Chad Mitchell Trio. (Kobluk could not recall the names of the other people in the photo.)

a/k/a Suit Man a/k/a Riverace, Vincent Falk is a downtown Chicago celebrity who was the subject of a 2008 documentary that followed him for a summer as he danced in loud suits on Chicago River bridges for the amusement of tour boats. His story has been told by the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, NBC5, and WTTW.

Born in 1949, Falk worked as a computer programmer for Cook County for 22 years. He has lived in Marina City’s west tower since 1998.

Albert Gaskin (1934-2010) was one of the first African-American Realtors on the north side of Chicago. He initially focused on selling homes to African-Americans in Evanston but over time expanded his clientele throughout the North Shore. In the early 1980s, Gaskin served on the board of directors of the North Shore Real Estate Association. At its peak, his real estate office in Evanston employed 13 sales associates.

The Windy City Times wrote in 2010 that in the African-American community, Gaskin “will be remembered as the real estate agent who broke down the unwritten segregated housing rules that plagued Evanston and the North Shore until the 1960s and ’70s.”

Violinist Joseph Golan (1930-2011) played with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as well as jazz bands on Bourbon Street in New Orleans.

Born in Chicago, Golan started taking violin lessons at age four and by age five was performing with orchestras and being paid for it. He attended the University of Chicago on a music scholarship but also participated in sports, lettering in baseball. While in college, he played violin in the Chicago Civic Orchestra and served as concertmaster during his final season. After graduating, he played for the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra as well local jazz bands.

Golan was short on formal training in music but long on being able to play with great musicians. “I was fortunate enough to have a knack for improvising in many different styles, without ever having a formal lesson in any of them,” he said in an interview with Musicians Professional Resource. “I love to improvise not only in the jazz styles, both acoustic and electric, but also in gypsy, klezmer [a musical style of eastern European Jews], country, and different classical styles.”

In 1969, he was hired by Sir Georg Solti, music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where Golan spent the next 33 years. He was principal second violin, beating seven other people who auditioned.

His career included playing with the Grant Park Symphony. He was artistic director of orchestra studies and professor of violin at Roosevelt University. He was also a studio musician, playing jingles for radio and TV commercials. He retired in 2002.

He and his wife, Olga, lived in a one-bedroom unit in the west tower at Marina City. They had four children – Ari, Lawrence, Lara, and David.

Mike Kobluk (left in photo) was an original member of Chad Mitchell Trio, a popular folk music group in the 1960s known for social commentary. Born in 1937 in British Columbia, Mike moved to Chicago in 1963. He and his wife, Clare (right in photo), lived in unit 4707 in the west tower at Marina City from 1963 to 1967.

Kobluk says when they moved in, theirs was the only completed unit on the floor. “Since it was promised by a certain date, the contractors completed my unit first and continued working all around and above us.”

Chad Mitchell Trio had six albums that peaked in the top 100 on the Billboard music charts. Kobluk continued to perform with the trio until 1968. He currently lives in Spokane.

NBC News correspondent John Palmer (1935-2013) lived at Marina City from 1963 to 1969. He moved to Chicago from Atlanta. The original developer of Marina City, Charles Swibel, showed him about five apartments and he chose unit 4505 in the west tower. He had a view looking west toward Merchandise Mart, where he worked. (NBC Tower was not built until 1989.)

He was the first tenant of 4505. He liked having a balcony, from which he could check the weather. Despite the four-block walk to work in freezing winter weather, Palmer said he enjoyed living at Marina City. He had a boat and in the summer, after doing the early evening news, he would call the marina and they would have it ready for him.

Palmer worked for NBC for 40 years.

Fire commissioner Robert J. Quinn (1905-1979) commanded the Chicago Fire Department from 1957 to 1978. His last residence in Chicago was at Marina City.

Quinn oversaw improvements in radio communication and introduction of the hydraulic aerial work platform called a “snorkel” that revolutionized urban fire fighting. During the 1968 riots, Quinn directed fire fighters from a helicopter. He retired in 1978 after 49 years of service.

Max Robinson (1939-1988) was the first African-American network news anchor in the U.S. Based in Chicago, he co-anchored ABC’s World News Tonight from 1978 to 1983. He then worked at local station WMAQ-TV in 1984 and 1985.

Robinson lived at Marina City until shortly before his death of AIDS in 1988. He lived on the 50th floor in an apartment with a view of Wacker Drive and the Chicago River.

In 1990, actor/comedian Aaron Freeman wrote an article for Chicago Magazine – The Last Days of Max Robinson – recalling his visit in May 1988 to Robinson’s “tiny” apartment. Wrote Freeman, “The 30-foot trip across the living room to the kitchen exhausted him.”

• Sarah Brady, prominent gun control advocate.
• Bob Gibson, considered one of the most popular and influential folk music singers and songwriters of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
• Robert Hanley, Chicago police officer and bodyguard for Mayor Richard J. Daley.
• Llewelyn Morris Humphreys a/k/a “Murray The Camel”, chief political and labor racketeer in the Chicago Outfit during Prohibition and one of the gunmen in the “St. Valentine‘s Day Massacre” of 1929.
• Dr. Gary S. Kimmel, Chicago dentist convicted of money laundering in 2008.
• Francis Samp, licensed gun collector who kept a Civil War-era cannon on his balcony, pointed toward the Chicago River. When Chicago police raided his apartment in 1991, it was the largest single seizure of weapons in Chicago. They took 285 guns, all of which were lawfully owned by Samp and returned to him.

• Barbara Eden. According to her publicist, she lived at Water Tower Place in Chicago, not Marina City.
• Fahey Flynn. The six-time Emmy-winning radio and TV newscaster, according to his daughter, did not live at Marina City.
• Dr. Robert Hartley. Although Marina City appears in the opening credits of The Bob Newhart Show, Newhart’s character did not live there. The Hartleys lived at 5901 North Sheridan Road, seven miles north.
• Ray Kroc. The most famous McDonald’s employee did not live at Marina City, but one of the corporation’s presidents did. Harry J. Sonneborn, president from 1960 to 1967, lived there in the early 1960s. McDonald’s is headquartered in Oak Brook, Illinois.