Last month, Tim and Liz Rhode celebrated the 15th anniversary of the club company that they founded. They threw a Hollywood-themed party that attracted 1,000 friends and club members. Photo by Marty Katz.

Wellness is a word that gets bandied about a lot in the fitness industry, but for 15 years, wellness has been the basis of the business model for the Maryland Athletic Club and Wellness Center (MAC).

Last month, the MAC’s founders, Tim and Liz Rhode, celebrated their business’s 15th anniversary with 1,000 of their closest friends and club members with a Hollywood-style party.

Tim Rhode says it is hard to believe how far the business has come since the couple renovated a vacant warehouse in Timonium, MD, to open their first club in 1996.

“On the one hand, it’s been a gradual evolution,” Tim says. “It would have been hard to think when we started thinking about it that we would be sitting here now, and yet it seems like it’s been just a blink of an eye. It’s been our passion. It’s been our life’s work.”

Their passion was to bring wellness to the people of Maryland. The first club underwent four renovations in just the first few years to keep up with the demand. Their motto was and is: make it easy, have fun, get results. They have held true to that mission while adapting to changing times that have led them through remodels, expanded programming and the opening of two more clubs, including an express model.

“We were fortunate that we had a great location that’s worked well for us and the club just took off,” Tim says. “It’s been a series of consecutive expansions and growth and development since then. We’re very fortunate.”

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