Ben Martell still runs into many who remember the 40-year phenomena of his family’s Holiday House dinner club on the banks of the Minnesota River outside of St. Peter.

But it’s been some two decades since it served as the place to go for company parties, special dinners for prom dates, anniversaries and numerous wedding parties.

Fewer people remember the dinner club’s and the family’s place in local history for one particular wedding party.

In 1966 a young musician named John Duetschendorf was playing the college circuit with The Mitchell Trio and made a stop at Gustavus in St. Peter. After the show, Duetschendorf met college student Annie Martell.

The two were married in the First Lutheran Church in St. Peter on June 9, 1967, with the reception at the Holiday House.

A couple of years later, Duetschendorf would change his name to John Denver and set out on a solo career that would immortalize him — and Annie Martell, for whom he wrote his No. 1 hit, “Annie’s Song.”

Ben, Annie and two sisters grew up working and playing in the Holiday House, owned by their parents Jim and Norma Martell.

“When my father came out of the service he worked with my grandparents who ran Martell’s Cafe in Le Sueur,” said Ben. A few years later they scouted for land to build a small dinner club and settled on an inexpensive piece of land off Highway 22 along the river and across the street from a junkyard.

“Everybody said they were crazy building next to a junkyard, but they said it made it look like their parking lot was always full,” said Ben, who lives in Le Sueur.

The little cottage-like dinner club, looking out over the river and dedicated to quality food and service, was an instant hit.

“They were outside the city limits so they couldn’t have a liquor license for the first 20 years they were there. So they made it a private bottle club,” Ben recalls. People paid a nominal fee to join and have their bottles of liquor kept at the Holiday House and pay a “set-up” price for mixes to go with the liquor.

The Martells kept adding on until the Holiday House was a long maze of connected dining rooms and bars. (Today, part of the building is a residence and much of the rest of it has been torn down.)

Jim and Norma retired when the business closed. They now live in Arizona and are both 84.

“Dad was philosophical about it closing. He said we had a good run but the white table-cloth dinner club era has gone by the wayside.”

Ben says it was a unique experience having John Denver as a member of the family and watching his and Annie’s lives become the stuff of legend.

“It’s strange watching someone you know become famous. But at the time we first knew him, he was just a guy that liked my sister.”

“He was like my big brother,” Ben said. When Ben and his wife, Kelly, were married in 1981, Denver sang the solo at their wedding. “Not too many people get to have John Denver sing Annie’s Song at their wedding.”

In 1969, Denver released his first album. It wasn’t a hit, but it contained a Denver-written song, “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane,” which became a No. 1 hit for Peter, Paul and Mary the same year.

Denver soon became an international superstar. A 1972 concert in Washington D.C. was attended by President Richard Nixon and China’s premier. Denver’s song, “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” would become the first western music legally played in Communist China.

In 1986, Denver was the first American to perform in the USSR since the Cold War began. It was also a time in which Denver had an increasingly high profile as an environmentalist.

In the mid ’80s, Denver and Frank Zappa joined to testify before Congress on the dangers of censoring music.

Through the 1970s and early ’80s, 15 of Denver’s albums made it into the Top 40 charts. In 1974 “Annie’s Song” went to No. 1.

John and Annie, who lived in Colorado, adopted two children.

The couple divorced in 1982. He remarried in 1988 and was divorced in 1993.

In the years after his second divorce, he and Annie reconciled their friendship.

Denver died while piloting an experimental aircraft on Oct. 12, 1997, at the age of 57. His ashes were spread over the Rocky Mountains.

Annie Denver lives in Aspen where she has a psychology practice. While her fame is just a normal part of the celebrity-rich Aspen community, Ben said his sister is a private person who rarely does interviews.

Ben Martell said the family’s ties to celebrity are something they long ago became comfortable with, although it comes as a surprise to those unfamiliar with it.

“Some people where I work find out Annie was married to John all those years and they say, ‘Why didn’t you tell me.’

“What am I going to do? Walk up to people and say, ‘Hey, did you know John Denver married my sister.’”

Tim Krohn is a Free Press staff writer. He can be contacted at 344-6383 or tkrohn@mankatofreepress.com