'Sandy' Magarey was born in Norwood, an inner eastern suburb of Adelaide, the only son amongst the five children of Dr Cromwell Magarey (one of the first four graduates of the new University of Adelaide Medical School in 1889) and Sophia (née Sandilands). His school days were spent at Prince Alfred College where he was long remembered as an outstanding gymnast. After completing his medical course and residencies he married Phyllis Burrell (a nurse whom he had met as a student at the Adelaide Hospital) on 6 May 1930; one son and two daughters were born to the marriage.

Ivan joined the medical staff of the Adelaide Children's Hospital as an honorary clinical assistant in 1931. He became an assistant physician in 1937 and then an honorary physician in 1947. He resigned from the honorary staff in 1961 to become clinical superintendent, a full-time position which he held until his retirement in 1969. These were the years when he had his closest association with the resident medical staff whose work he was supervising, and during which he consolidated the almost legendary respect and affection that grew around him within the hospital. After 1969 Ivan still continued an association with the Hospital as the medical officer caring for the nursing staff and as a visiting physician to Estcourt House, the Children's Hospital Convalescent Home at the seaside in the suburb of Tennyson, until his final retirement in 1974. Even then he could not be idle and happily became medical superintendent of Ru Rua Hospital in North Adelaide, a state institution for mentally retarded children; he held this position until increasing ill-health forced his final retirement in 1977.

Ivan's career, as was the case with so many of his generation, was interrupted by the Second World War. He served in the Australian Army Medical Corps from 1941 to 1946 in the Northern Territory and New Guinea. However it was no surprise to his friends, who knew what an individualist he was and how his sole concern would be the welfare of his men, when he didn't rise above the rank of major. Nevertheless he was one of the selected band of Australian doctors who were sent by flying boat to Singapore to succour the troops in Changi prison camp after the Japanese surrender.

Until the outbreak of war Ivan had worked as a family doctor in Norwood, building up the practice formerly conducted by his father and steadily developing some consultant work on North Terrace. After the war he continued as a physician but gradually gave up adult medicine to concentrate on paediatrics. He inevitably was invited to be one of the small number of foundation members of the Australian Paediatric Association (now the Australian College of Paediatrics) in 1950 although perhaps one of the main attractions of membership was the opportunity provided by the annual meetings in Canberra to play golf with colleagues or to fish the sweet streams of the nearby Alps, complete with his home-made flies. Ivan also fished at various unseemly hours the streams of the Adelaide Hills and in addition to this activity and his golf, he was a keen woodworker at home.

These quiet pursuits seem most apt for an unobtrusive, rather retiring, man like 'Sandy' Magarey whose humility was as much a part of him as his integrity. However in spite of his self-effacing ways, he was renowned for his sense of humour and could always be relied upon for an amusing story which he would tell almost under his breath whilst a rather shaggy hand-rolled cigarette dangled from his lips. It was tragic that this lovable man was destined to spend his last few years as a distressingly dependent invalid in the Helping Hand Centre in North Adelaide where he was devotedly supported by his wife until the merciful end.