You can get the Ritz Carlton Visa and choose to keep your membership in Marriott Rewards. That gives you gold status the first year and you retain it if you spend $10k annually on the card.

Chase Launching Ritz-Carlton Visa Card

The annual fee is hefty, but you get $200 of that back in airline free credits. So essentially $195/year for Gold status assuming you meet the spend requirement. I made the decision to try it out late last year - had an 18 day Christmas vacation that was planned for all Marriott full service hotels so thought it would work out based on breakfast alone. Applied end of November and was gold shortly thereafter.

You will see in the linked thread above that many cancel this card after a year. And while I will make little use out of the Ritz benefits (though have done the $100 stay credit and club level upgrade once so far and it was nice), having MR Gold status I have actually switched a lot of my stays to Marriott this year and so far the experience has been positive. Already hit the spend threshold, so plan to keep the card at least another year.