Is putting meat in the fridge to marinate necessary?
For a 30 min marinade, no, you don't have to put it in the fridge.  In fact, many recipes will call for removing thick beef cuts from the fridge 20-60 min before cooking, to let the meat come up to room temperature.

That being said, there has been some testing of what sort of difference bringing a steak to room temperature makes, and the general concensus is that cooking a cold steak gives better results.  America's Test Kitchen's tests found that people preferred frozen steaks, although it required freezing to ensure you didn't develop surface ice crystals, and cooking in more oil than typical.