Her father, Patrick Andrew Murray, was an Irish carriage-repair worker, while her mother, Maria Stuart, was of English and Scottish heritage.

Their daughter, Mary Stuart Jordan, was born in 1914, and Murray returned to the United States upon the outbreak of the First World War.

[1] Jordan completed her internship at Worcester Memorial Hospital before moving to Chicago to train in gastroenterology with Bertram Welton Sippy at Rush Medical College.

[2] She was appointed to the editorial board of the Journal of Digestive Diseases and Nutrition in 1934, which was at the time the official publication of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA).

[3] She treated a number of celebrity patients, including The New Yorker founder Harold Ross, who encouraged Jordan to co-write a cookbook with culinary journalist Sheila Hibben.