(NEXSTAR) — Elwood Edwards, the man behind AOL’s iconic “You’ve got mail” voice alert has died at age 74, according to his former employer, local Cleveland television station WKYC.
The outlet reported that he passed away from an undisclosed illness on Nov. 5, a day before his 75th birthday.
Described by WKYC as a “jack-of-all trades,” Edwards worked in various roles at the station throughout the years, from graphics supervisor to camera operator.
In 1989, he recorded four simple phrases for AOL, including “You’ve got mail,” “Welcome,” “File’s done,” and “Goodbye.” His wife Karen, a customer service representative at Quantum Computer Services — the company that would later become AOL — connected him with the opportunity.
“She heard Steve Case [the company’s co-founder] talking to some of the programmers about how fun it would be to add a voice to the software,” Edwards said in a June 2016 interview with the Great Big Story. “I’d been an announcer throughout my entire broadcasting career, and she volunteered me.”
Edwards recorded the phrases in his living room using a cassette deck, not realizing how impactful they would become.
“It started off as a test just to see if it would catch on, and, lo and behold, in the mid-90s, it had really caught on,” he recalled.
At one point, he said, “my voice was heard more than 35 million times a day.” But he only received $200 for the recordings, he previously told Inside Edition.
With AOL’s popularity in the 90s, the phrase “You’ve got mail” became more than a greeting; it symbolized a new era of digital communication. The iconic phrase even inspired the 1998 romantic comedy “You’ve Got Mail,” starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.
Edwards retired from WKYC in April 2014 after nearly five decades in the broadcasting industry.