It was also in 1935 that Sheehy Skeffington married Andrée Denis, a French graduate of the Sorbonne and a daughter of friends of his parents from Amiens. It was at Amiens Town Hall the two were wed on 23 March. The early years of their marriage were rough; they survived on Owen's low paid salary as a junior academic at Trinity back in Ireland, and both their relationship and his career was interrupted by Owen suffering a collapsed lung which required him to sojourn to Switzerland for specialist treatment in 1937 and 1938. However, by 1939 Owen was able to resume work at Trinity, becoming a lecturer in French.