NORTH ANDOVER, Mass. — Dave McGillivray first encountered Dick Hoyt on Cape Cod in the early 1980s, around the five-mile mark of the famed Falmouth Road Race.

“As I was running, I see this guy pushing a kid, really a young adult, in a wheelchair — and he’s blowing right by me,” recalled McGillivray, an iconic runner and race organizer, notably as race director of the Boston Marathon.

“I’d seen people racing in wheelchairs, but never someone pushing another person,” said McGillivray. “I just said, ‘This guy is not going to beat me.’”

He was wrong.

The Hoyts — Dick pushing and his son Rick in the wheelchair — indeed finished ahead of McGillivray.

The experience drew McGillivray to them. After the event, he caught up with the Hoyts and learned of their start in road racing.

Rick was born with cerebral palsy. At age 15 he convinced his dad, retired from the Air National Guard, to run with him in a local charity race. Their “team” was born.

By the time the Hoyts met McGillivray, they were planning to compete in a triathlon, which was the race director’s specialty.

“I was managing the Bay State Triathlon and I asked (Dick) how they planned to swim,” McGillivray said. “He said, ‘I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.’ They came to Medford and we got Rick a dinghy so Dick could pull him. They made it work.”

Dick Hoyt died in his sleep on Wednesday morning at his home in central Massachusetts. He was 80. His devotion to his son, now 59, was the stuff of legend.

McGillivray and Team Hoyt, the official name of the duo from Sturbridge, were the best of friends for nearly four decades.

They were connected by the Boston Marathon, which the Hoyts ran 32 times, triathlons and other races, and McGillivray ended up managing some of their appearances.

Many great stories include one involving the famed Ironman World Championship in Hawaii.

McGillivray competed in the race — a 2 1/2 mile swim, followed by a 112-mile bike race and then a full 26.2 mile marathon — many times. At one point he got a phone call from Hoyt.

“Dick said, ‘Rick wants to compete in the Ironman in Hawaii,’” McGillivray recalled. “I said, ‘Dick, are you crazy? It’s too tough. The swim alone.’

“He said, ‘Rick wants to do it. Can you get us in?’ I got him in, and he never made the swim cutoff.

“Dick called me a month later and said, ‘Rick wants to go back to Hawaii next year and try again,’” McGillivray said. “I ended up getting him in again. This time they were able to finish. It was an amazing story.

The Hoyts were regulars at the Feaster Five race in Andover, Massachusetts on Thanksgiving morning for more than two decades. They were involved in the race before McGillivray became its director, drawn to it because the father and son wanted to run before spending the holiday with relatives in a nearby town.

Following McGillivray’s lead, the Hoyts ran and biked across the country for charity. McGillivray planned and managed the route for them.

McGillivray said one of the greatest gifts he ever received came from the Hoyts on his 60th birthday, in 2014. They not only participated in his annual “birthday run” — in which McGillivray runs his age, in miles — but they gave him a box.

Inside was a card saying McGillivray could push Rick in a race.

“It was amazing because through all our contact over the years, I’d never been alone with Rick,” McGillivray said.

“I was talking and talking, and talking about all of the things we’d seen and done,’’ he remembered. “It was incredible. Rick had this big smile on his face. I was smiling. It was one of the experiences of my life.

“I also realized how hard it was, and it told me how special Dick was,” he said.

McGillivray said Dick Hoyt had a “greater purpose in life than all of us.”

“At the time he started out with Rick, running was very competitive — it was about winning. And Dick was incredible, pushing Rick under three hours in the Boston Marathon. That’s amazing,” he said.

“But then philanthropy became important in racing. But he was there first. He started this movement,” McGillivray said.

“I always looked at him as invincible. He was so tough mentally and physically. But in the end, he was a kind soul, as special as they come.”