Family owned · Est. 1974 A bad nickname, a fast boat, and the first deal written on a brown paper sack. Fifty-two years later it's six docks across two states — still the same family, still on the same water.
Turn the page ↓The name started as an insult. A rough college haircut, a girlfriend who laughed and called him "Ugly John," and a marketing professor who told him a name people remember beats a name people forget. John leaned all the way in — and a joke nobody meant to keep became a brand the whole lake trusts.
Fifty-two years later, it's on six docks.
John Mullen, known around the lake as “Ugly John,” starts selling boats out of his home in Turley, Oklahoma. He soon rents a 1,200-square-foot building and takes on his first new lines: Hondo and Dimarco racing boats out of Los Angeles.
Before he ever sold a boat for a living, John ran the drag-boat and offshore circuit — all in, no shortcuts, always closer to the water than the road. That obsession with going flat-out across open water became the foundation of the whole business.
A year in, operations move to South Tulsa. The first family boat line, Celebrity, arrives alongside a 50-by-75-foot facility at Keystone Lake. Baja and Fountain follow not long after.
Ugly John's develops Westport Marina at Keystone Lake and opens a highway store in Grove, on Grand Lake o' the Cherokees. It's the first real step onto the water that still defines us today.
Grand Lake proves a turning point. The family builds Thunder Bay Marina, today the corporate home of Ugly John's, and adds premier yacht names like Carver and Bluewater.
John's sons Jeremy and Chris run sales and management, and his wife Velma builds the ship stores. Today the third generation, Blake and Cooper, backs trailers down the same ramps.
432 covered slips across Oklahoma and Arkansas, plus dealerships, marinas, ship stores, and a grill on the dock. The same family, on the same water, since 1974.
What started with John is now run by his sons and grandsons — the same people you'll meet on the dock on a Saturday.
Race champion turned marina builder. Started it all in 1974, and still the reason the boats are fast and the handshake means something.
The sons who turned one dock into six, and a showroom into a marina you can spend a whole season at. Backing trailers down ramps since they could walk.
The grandkids are already on the water, learning the lake and the names the way the family always has — by being out there every weekend.
The crew · since 1974
Every Ugly Johns location ever opened was purchased on April 1st. John Mullen once pushed a closing back six months just to keep the date.
The first boat deal was written on a brown paper sack, balanced on a milk crate, on the dirt floor of John's garage in Turley.
Before he sold a single boat, John set three national speed records and took a world championship on the race circuit.
John's classic-car collection — "all the things I wanted as a kid and couldn't have" — got its own tour from Gas Monkey's Richard Rawlings.
Fifty-two years on the water means a lot more entries in this log. Got one? Tell us on the dock.
The family, the docks, the boats, and the people who made Ugly Johns home. A few from the archives, a lot from last summer. Tap any to open it full-screen.
Walk a dock, meet the family, and see why three generations have stayed on the same water.