Over the years, the hotel register and spa appointment book has included the names of David Letterman, Olympic figure skating champion Kristi Yamaguchi, Las Vegas crooner Wayne Newton and opera star Sarah Brightman. In 1993, Conde Nast Traveler named the Aurora location one of the top 10 spas in the United States. They married in 1967 and began building a collection of five Northeast Ohio locations that have made the name Mario’s synonymous with the word spa. “I really disliked him because he didn’t hire me,” she recalls.Ī year later, however, Mario called Joanne and offered her a position as a stylist. Instead, Mario told her she needed to get a year’s experience at another salon. When she graduated from beauty school in 1963, Joanne assumed the hairdresser would be happy to give her a job after all the times she’d loaned her locks to him. He said, ‘How’d you like to model for me?’”įor the next couple of years, Joanne allowed her hair to be colored and coaxed into fantastical styles her only payment was the coiffure she modeled. “He wanted to look at my neckline - that was very important for styling. “He walks over, takes all my hair, and pulls it up,” she remembers.

Mario, a stylist who operated a new Maple Heights shop, noticed the young woman’s head of thick, shoulder-length brown hair. It was 1960, and Joanne, then a student at a now-defunct Maple Heights beauty school, was attending a hair show in Cleveland with her mother. The 62-year-old co-owner of Mario’s International Spas & Hotels tells the tale while her 68-year-old partner in business and life watches the last minutes of an NFL playoff game at the bar of their flagship Aurora property. It was hair that split them apart - almost.Īfter 33 years of marriage, Joanne Liuzzo can laugh at how her husband Mario practically ended their relationship before it began.

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