On 16 April 1970, he married Mrs Ileen Fryer Turner (née Rayner, born 19 April 1914), whom he had known since she was his police driver in Birmingham during the war and who at one time had been the mistress of his great friend Sir Edward ('Ted') Dodd, Chief Constable of Birmingham and later Chief Inspector of Constabulary. She died on 31 December 2002. In the 1980s, she declined a proposal of marriage from Sir Graham Shillington, Young's successor as Chief Constable of the RUC.