On June 14, 1877, while in New York, James O'Neill married Mary Ellen Quinlan, daughter of Thomas and Bridget Quinlan, at St. Ann's Church on 12th Street. James and Ella had three sons: James (b. 1878), Edmund (b. 1883) and Eugene O'Neill (b. 1888). While James was on tour, Ella often accompanied him, and the boys were placed in boarding school. In the fall of 1877, three months after James' marriage, a woman by the name of Nettie Walsh sued O'Neill, claiming that he had married her five years earlier, when she was only 15, and that he was the father of her three-year-old son. She said she wanted a divorce and alimony. The 31-year-old James was now the leading man in a New York-based theater company, earning the munificent wage of $195 a week. He told a reporter who interviewed him backstage, "The whole thing is a piece of blackmail and an old story that has been tagging me around ever since I began to acquire prominence in my profession." Nettie Walsh lost her case and the publicity, although it wounded James's young bride, enhanced his reputation as a romantic leading man.