[1] On 14 September 1947, Mary married Armagh-born doctor Pearse O’Malley in University Church, Dublin and soon afterwards moved to Belfast.
[2] She was elected to Belfast Corporation in May 1952, as an Irish Labour Party councillor for the Smithfield ward.
[citation needed] O'Malley was appointed as an honorary member of the Ulster Society of Women Artists in 1958.
[1][4][5] In March 1951, she started Belfast’s Lyric Players Theatre, initially at Ulsterville House[6] and, the following year, in the former stables at the back of her home in Derryvolgie Avenue, off the Malone Road.
[7][8] The date of the official opening was chosen by O'Malley as an homage to US President John F. Kennedy's Amherst address, 26 October 1963, in which he affirmed the role of the artist in society.