Elwood Edwards, the voice behind the early internet's iconic America Online "You've got mail" message—among other phrases—has died following a long illness. He was 74 when he died, just a day before his 75th birthday.
His passing was confirmed by his former employer, NBC affiliate WKYC-TV Studios in Cleveland, where he worked for years as a "graphics guru, camera operator, and general jack-of-all-trades." After first getting his start in radio in high school, Edwards did some on-air television work and as a live booth announcer.
However, Edwards was undoubtedly best known for his AOL voiceover work, which was ubiquitous throughout the '90s. His wife worked for the predecessor company Quantum Link, which eventually became America Online. When hearing the company CEO note that he wanted to add a voice to the user interface, she recruited her husband for the job, which he was paid just $200.
Edwards recorded the four phrases on a cassette deck in his living room in 1989, including "Welcome," "You've got mail," "File's done," and "Goodbye." It didn't take long for his voice to skyrocket into a pop cultural mainstay, inspiring the 1998 Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romantic comedy, You've Got Mail.
After he retired, Edwards sold personalized .wav files on his website, cheekily titled "Makin' Waves."
In 2015, he also appeared on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon for an Audience Suggestion Box segment, in which it was asked if the "You've Got Mail" guy could say different things and if Fallon could make that happen. Beaming for the audience, Edwards recited a handful of other phrases including "Uptown Funk," "Adele Dazeem," and "Dat Ass Tho."
