The in-line (IL) vortex-induced vibration (VIV) that occurs frequently in ocean engineering may cause severe fatigue damage in slender marine structures. To the best knowledge of the authors, in existing literatures, there is no efficient analytical model for predicting pure IL VIV. In this paper, a wake oscillator model capable of analyzing the IL VIV of slender marine structures has been developed. Two different kinds of van der Pol equations are used to describe the near wake dynamics related to the fluctuating nature of symmetric vortex shedding in the first excitation region and alternate vortex shedding in the second one. Some comparisons are carried out between the present model results and experimental data. It is found that many phenomena observed in experiments could be reproduced by the present wake oscillator model.