Elwood Edwards, an announcer who voiced the ubiquitous AOL email alert “You’ve got mail” at a time when many Americans were just beginning to learn how to navigate the internet, died on Tuesday at his home in New Bern, N.C. He was 74.
His daughter Sallie Edwards confirmed his death and said the cause was complications from a stroke.
In the 1990s, as computers began to crop up in home offices and families were getting used to the clanking dial-up tones, AOL became synonymous with nascent internet technology. Narrating the leap into the new frontier was Mr. Edwards, whose soothing voice notes were heard in cubicles, corner offices and living rooms throughout the country.
His “Welcome” would greet users in the new online landscape and let them know that a message awaited at a time when spam mail was rare, and dings, buzzes and push notifications had not yet become entrenched in daily life.
“It started off as a test just to see if it would catch on,” Mr. Edwards said in an interview with Great Big Story, a documentary company, in 2016. “At one point they said my voice was heard more than 35 million times a day.”
Elwood Hughes Edwards Jr. was born on Nov. 6, 1949, in Glen Burnie, Md., to Elwood Hughes Edwards Sr., who was in the Army, and Julia (Wheeler) Edwards. The family moved to Beaufort, N.C., and then to New Bern, N.C., where Mr. Edwards attended high school and began what would be a long career in broadcasting, starting in AM radio.
“He started out as a teenager, before he was old enough to collect a paycheck,” his daughter Ms. Edwards said in an interview on Thursday. He began to work behind the scenes in television, too, at the local news station WCTI. Occasionally, he would go on camera to report the weather.
Mr. Edwards also began to voice commercials for businesses and organizations, including for a local church.
In the 1980s, his wife, Karen Edwards, worked as a customer service representative for Quantum Computer Services, which would become AOL. She heard that the company was thinking of adding a voice-over to its software, and in 1989 she suggested Mr. Edwards for the narration.
He scribbled the phrases “Welcome,” “You’ve got mail,” “File’s done” and “Goodbye” on a piece of paper and recorded them into a cassette deck in his living room.
The tone Mr. Edwards struck was a hit, and he was paid $200 for his recordings.
Those alerts, especially “You’ve got mail,” became indelible in the story of the internet even as AOL’s hold on the industry waned in later years.
Mr. Edwards’s voice became so recognizable that it pushed him — albeit somewhat anonymously — into the national imagination.
“You’ve Got Mail” was the title of the 1998 rom-com starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan that viewed the internet through a lens of excitement, wonder and possibility. Mr. Edwards was asked to lend his voice to an episode of “The Simpsons” in 2000, as a virtual doctor giving a diagnosis (“You’ve got leprosy”). And, in a commercial for Shopify, Mr. Edwards appeared on camera to let a customer know “You’ve got sales.”
He has been a clue on “Jeopardy!” and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” he said in an interview on “Good Company Today,” a talk show in Cleveland, and appeared on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” in 2015 to recite his catchphrase (and a few others).
In addition to Sallie Edwards, he is survived by another daughter, Heather Edwards; a brother, Bill; and a granddaughter.
In 2016, Mr. Edwards retired after 14 years working at 3News for WKYC Studios in Cleveland, where he was a “graphics guru, camera operator and general jack-of-all-trades,” according to an article by WKYC staff after his death.
That kind of work “has never been a job to me,” Mr. Edwards said on “Good Company.” “It’s been an extension of my life.”
Mr. Edwards’s reach extended well beyond local outlets and networks.
“Being associated with AOL has been gratifying,” he said on Great Big Story. “Even today, you go on aol.com, I greet you, I greet myself.”
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