Voice of AOL’s ‘You’ve got mail,’ Elwood Edwards, dies at 74

Elwood Edwards, the antheral whose “You’ve got mail” recording defined an online generation, died Tuesday astatine property 74.

Edwards died from an unspecified semipermanent illness, according to Cleveland NBC affiliate WKYC, wherever helium had worked for years. He passed distant the time earlier helium would person celebrated his 75th birthday.

Though Edwards was not a celebrated sanction oregon face, his dependable was known to millions. In 1989, helium recorded 4 abbreviated phrases for a then-small institution called America Online. Those phrases included “Welcome,” “You’ve got mail,” “Files done” and “Goodbye.”

When the company, aboriginal known arsenic AOL, became the astir fashionable net supplier successful the world, Edwards’ dependable was heard millions of times each day.

“I had nary thought it would go what it did, I don’t deliberation anybody did,” Edwards said connected a podcast successful 2019.

Edwards got the accidental due to the fact that his wife, Karen, worked astatine Quantum Computer Services, a predecessor of AOL. When Karen overheard Quantum CEO Steve Case talking astir adding a dependable to an upcoming update, she volunteered her hubby for the job. Edwards was paid $200 to grounds the phrases.

“Suddenly, AOL took off,” Edwards said connected the “Silent Giants with Corey Cambridge” podcast. “I retrieve lasting successful enactment astatine CompUSA and seeing [stacks of AOL CDs] and thinking, ‘My dependable is connected each 1 of those, and cipher has a clue.’”

Edwards’ time occupation was moving down the scenes with section TV stations. A autochthonal of North Carolina, Edwards moved to Ohio successful 1994 erstwhile helium got a occupation astatine Akron presumption WVPX. He aboriginal moved to WKYC, wherever helium worked for galore years arsenic a “graphics guru, camera relation and wide jack-of-all-trades,” according to the station.

Over the years, Edwards made a fewer TV appearances to repetition his astir celebrated phrase, including a 2015 halt connected “The Tonight Show.”

“It ne'er truly went overmuch past that,” he told Cleveland Magazine. “I deliberation I became typecast.”

Originally Published: November 7, 2024 astatine 4:10 PM EST