In this paper, the existence of a solution to the problem describing the small vertical vibration of an elastic string on the positive half-line is investigated in the case when both viscous and material damping coefficients are present. The result is obtained by transforming the original partial differential equation into an appropriate abstract second-order ordinary differential equation in a suitable infinite dimensional space. The abstract problem is then studied using the combination of the Kakutani fixed point theorem together with the approximation solvability method and the weak topology. The applied procedure enables obtaining the existence result also for problems depending on the first derivative, without any strict compactness assumptions put on the righthand side and on the fundamental system generated by the linear term. The paper ends by applying the obtained result to the studied mathematical model describing the small vertical vibration of an elastic string with a nonlinear Balakrishnan–Taylor-type damping term.