Elwood Edwards, an announcer and local TV worker who became internationally known as the voice of AOL’s “You’ve got mail!” promptly to millions at the dawn of the Internet age, has died, AOL announced. He was 74.
He died Tuesday at his home in New Bern, North Carolina. His daughter Sallie Edwards said the cause of death was complications of a stroke, the New York Times reported.
In 1989, Quantum Computer Services (which would rename itself AOL) hired Edwards to record a series of alerts for the online service, including “You’ve got mail!”, “Welcome,” “Files ready,” and “See you later.” goodbye’. He earned $200 for the performance.
“Edwards’ voice made AOL feel a little friendlier and more welcoming at a time when the Internet was a big new world for most people,” AOL said in a statement. AOL is now part of Yahoo, which is 90% owned by Apollo Global Management and 10% by Verizon.
In a 2016 interview with CNN’s Great Big Story, Edwards talked about his iconic AOL voiceover work. “It started as a test, just to see if it would work,” Edwards said. “At one point they said my voice was heard more than 35 million times a day.”
Edwards had worked for 14 years at WKYC’s 3News, at the NBC-affiliated TV station in Cleveland, as “a graphics guru, camera operator and general jack-of-all-trades,” the station said Thursday in a post on its website. Edwards retired in 2016. According to WKYC, he died the day before his 75th birthday.
Years after recording the AOL Prompts, Edwards’ voice remained a cultural touchstone, most notably the 1998 rom-com “You’ve Got Mail,” directed by Nora Ephron and starring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks like two Manhattanites who are the first to connect to AOL. In a 2000 episode of “The Simpsons,” Edwards provided the voice of an online doctor delivering bad news: “You have leprosy!”
His wife, Karen Edwards, was working as a customer service representative at Quantum Computer Services when she heard then-CEO Steve Case talking about adding a voice to the upcoming AOL software, Edwards said in a video AOL shared on YouTube in 2012. – of course: “You have mail!” became a catchphrase: “I have a certain amount of difficulty trying to escape.”