The eldest daughter of a jeweler, Jolie (1896–1997), and a soldier, Vilmos Gábor (1881-1962), she was born in 1915 in Budapest. Her parents were both from Jewish families. She is listed in Hungary: Jewish Names from the Central Zionist Archives, under her first married name, as Magda Bychowsky. She stood 5'6" tall with red hair and gray eyes.
During World War II, Gabor was reported to have been the fiancée of the Portuguese ambassador to Hungary, Carlos Sampaio Garrido; another source claims she was his mistress and another claims she was his aide. After she fled to Portugal in 1944, following the Nazi occupation of Hungary, and, with Sampaio's assistance, she was reportedly the mistress of a Spanish nobleman, José Luis de Vilallonga. Gabor arrived in the United States in February 1946, from Natal, Brazil. Within a year of her arrival she married an American citizen, william Rankin, and remained in the country.
Magda Gabor died on June 6, 1997, five days before her 82nd birthday, from renal failure and the decision was decided to remove life support, two months after the death of her mother, and was interred in Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.
