In 1925 the fifteen-year-old Sarah fell in love with Andrew Ogan, a twenty-year-old from Claiborne County, Tennessee, who had come to work in the Fox Ridge coal mine in Bell County, Kentucky. They eloped to Cumberland Gap to marry. They had four children, two of whom died during the Depression. Living conditions were bad in eastern Kentucky by 1931, and many miners responded to the retreat of the United Mine Workers by joining the communist-led National Miners Union (NMU). The ensuing violence and controversy led many NMU leaders to leave the state.