A magnetic tunnel junction cell having a free layer, a ferromagnetic pinned layer, and a barrier layer therebetween. The free layer has a central ferromagnetic portion and a stabilizing portion radially proximate the central ferromagnetic portion. The construction can be used for both in-plane magnetic memory cells where the magnetization orientation of the magnetic layer is in the stack film plane and out-of-plane magnetic memory cells where the magnetization orientation of the magnetic layer is out of the stack film plane, e.g., perpendicular to the stack plane.