  We consider the soft-wall holographic model with the linear dilaton
background. The model leads to a Hydrogen-like meson spectrum which can be
interpreted as the static limit with very large quark masses when the Coulomb
interaction dominates. The mass scale introduced by the linear dilaton is
matched to the quark mass. The resulting model is analyzed for the scalar,
vector and tensor cases. The electromagnetic coupling constants predicted by
the model are decreasing with the radial number in contrast to the soft-wall
model with quadratic dilaton where these couplings represent a universal
constant. The given prediction is qualitatively consistent with the
corresponding experimental data in vector quarkonia. The proposed model can
thus be used as a constituent part of more elaborated holographic models for
heavy quarkonia. A particular example of such a model is put forward.
